This unit aims to develop students' critical and analytical understanding of key ethical issues in patient care. The unit focuses initially on three main ethical principles, embodying the concepts of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. These principles are used to analyse and discuss a variety of broad ethical issues which arise in patient care, such as the allocation of health care resources, the justifiability of paternalism, breaches of patient confidentiality, in vitro fertilisation, and euthanasia. There is also some discussion of the role of health professionals, in relation to conscientious refusals to treat patients, and issues in family care giving. -- Course Website
Instructor: Dr Tatjana Visak