TRS 142 - Medical Ethics

Upper Division

Prerequisites
TRS 097 or TRS 189.

Ethics-how we should live-is at the core of medical practice. With the dramatic changes in medical practice in recent decades, from new technologies, to changes in financing, to a changed conception of patient rights, medical ethics has rapidly moved from obscurity to become one of the most important areas of applied ethics. This course explores the relation between religious and moral values and the choices we as individuals and as a society make about health care. Basic principles and methods of contemporary medical ethics will be introduced, along with a focus on virtue ethics and competing models of the patient-physician relationship. A wide range of issues will be analyzed: informed consent, confidentiality, research on human subjects, reproductive technology, appropriate care for seriously ill newborns, abortion, gene therapy, quality-of-life assessments, terminal sedation, withdrawal of nutrition and hydration, physician-assisted suicide, and proposals for health-care reform.

Core Curriculum Designation(s)
TE - Theological Explorations; TCG - The Common Good

Course credits: 1