Unit rationale, description and aim
This unit introduces students to fundamental and distinctive ethical principles of patient care and medical ethics, such as the dignity of the human person, patient autonomy, and elementary principles of justice. It also considers such issues as informed consent, confidentiality and the disclosure of information, duty of care, and considerations around beginning of life and end of life ethical issues.
Campus offering
No unit offerings are currently available for this unitLearning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Identify substantive principles of clinical ethics...
Learning Outcome 01
Apply substantive principles to individual cases
Learning Outcome 02
Interpret the relevant ethical values involved in ...
Learning Outcome 03
Analyse contextual challenges faced by individual ...
Learning Outcome 04
Content
Topics chosen from the following areas:
- patient autonomy, the health professional and the right to treat;
- informed consent, confidentiality and the disclosure of information;
- the relationship between patient (or resident of a health care institution) and the professional;
- the duty not to harm;
- principle of double effect;
- the good of the patient as the goal of treatment;
- balancing costs and benefits;
- paternalism and the conflict between doing good and respecting autonomy;
- justice in health care;
- justice as a character trait of individual practitioners;
- the right to health care and its entailments;
- the ethics of the health care professional;
- professional virtues.
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment strategy for this unit is designed to facilitate broad engagement across the topics covered, while also requiring deeper engagement with one of the unit topics in particular. The tutorial oral and accompanying short written task requires students to demonstrate skills in attentive and accurate reading of a key text, and to explicate it in clear and concise oral and written formats. The short written task that follows requires students to explicate and analyse another text at greater length. Finally, the research essay task provides students with the opportunity to undertake sustained philosophical reading and research, culminating in an extended piece of formal writing that examines their capacity to develop a coherent argument in response to an important philosophical question.
Overview of assessments
Tutorial oral and associated short written task ...
Tutorial oral and associated short written task
Requires students to demonstrate skills in written and spoken exposition and analysis of a text.
20%
Written analysis task Requires students to demon...
Written analysis task
Requires students to demonstrate understanding of key concepts and debates.
30%
Argumentative/Research Essay Requires students to...
Argumentative/Research Essay
Requires students to critically analyse an important debate in the field and to develop a coherent position.
50%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit involves 150 hours of focused learning. The total includes formally structured learning activities such as lectures, tutorials and online learning. The remaining hours typically involve reading, research, and the preparation of tasks for assessment. The unit has been designed as a blend of a blend of collaborative learning and project-based learning approaches, combined with direct instruction to introduce and draw out new and unfamiliar concepts and theories. The collaborative context of the unit is focused especially on the small group discussion of the weekly readings. The project-based aspect relates to the research project on which students work throughout the second half of the unit, culminating in their research essay.