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Class Descriptions

Ethical Dilemmas in Health for Social Work and Other Health Professions

SW705

Credits: 3
Prerequisites: None
Faculty Approval Date: 01/06/2010

Course Description

From a beginning in efforts to protect human rights in biomedical research, the field of health-related ethics, sometimes called “bioethics” has grown rapidly. It now encompasses such major areas as equity of access to, and delivery of, health care services, and the impact of the rapid proliferation of technologies (e.g. genetic and advanced diagnostic testing, prenatal, mind-altering and life-prolonging treatments) on how human life is defined, and on health care decisions and quality of life. While many of these issues, and the dilemmas they create, focus on the rights and burdens of individuals and families, ethical dilemmas in health have increasingly far-reaching implications for communities and societies. These dilemmas pose challenges to social workers, social service and health care practitioners, administrators, policy makers and social and health scientists. Issues that have traditionally been private concerns are increasingly played out in the public arena, with passionate constituencies and extensive, and often inflammatory, media attention. The key roles and importance of well-trained and practiced social workers and other health care providers, administrators, planners and policy makers in assuring equitable treatment and protecting individuals, communities and societies, provide the central rationale for this course.

This course will use a case-study approach. It will use ethical frameworks from social work, medicine, public health, nursing, psychology and others health-related fields for decision-making, both generally and as applied to specific dilemmas. The course will also include discussion of conflicts between professional ethics codes and federal, state and local laws, regulations and codes (e.g. penal, mental health).

Objectives

Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the key principles of social work and other health professional ethics codes that guide ethical decision-making and apply them in the context of social justice, human rights, autonomy, resource allocation and responsibility.

2. Identify how similarities and differences in principles and decision-making methods, across professional codes, may contradict and/or complement one another in health-related practice, and in relation to local, state, national and/or international law, codes and regulations.

3. Assess how their personal values may differ from, or are similar to the values of their profession.

4. Demonstrate how individual, family and community resources, educational level, gender, ethnicity, religion or spirituality, age, sexual orientation, marital status and other characteristics (of decision-makers and those affected by their decisions) may affect ethical decision-making.

5. Analyze and discuss the role of media in framing discussions and decisions related to ethics and health, as it affects the general public and specific population groups.

6. Demonstrate their ability to apply ethical frameworks and critical thinking to selected ethical dilemmas that arise in health care settings, and in health policy development and implementation, through written analyses and through their assigned roles during case study/case conference meetings and public hearings.

7. Use an interdisciplinary case study/case conference approach to practice decision-making applied to several contemporary health policy and health care issues including genetics, maternal/fetal conflict, fertility and reproduction, beginning and end-of-life decisions (care, quality and length of life) and allocation of health-related resources.

Design

This will be a “hands-on” course that will begin with an introduction and exploration of ethical principles and frameworks used to guide health-related practice and research in the social and health professions. Subsequently, a case-study approach will be used to examine common dilemmas faced in practice from the perspective of policy-makers, health and social service agency directors and practitioners, communities, families and individuals. Course participants will learn and practice methods for analyzing ethical dilemmas from their personal and professional perspectives. They will develop, present and participate in analyses of bioethical issues and participate in decision-making meetings. The course methods

Intensive Focus on Privilege, Oppression, Diversity and Social Justice (PODS)

Biomedicine has been guilty of some of the greatest violations of human rights in history including forced sterilizations of developmentally disabled and ethnic minority group members, selective abortion of female fetuses, Nazi and Tuskegee human experimentation, withholding medical treatment of prisoners and other oppressed groups. Historically, in the present, and likely in the future, many of greatest health-related dilemmas arise from inequitable access to, or discriminatory application or withholding of health-related research and treatment based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, access to resources, and a variety of other individual and population-based characteristics. This course will address many of these directly in readings, case examples and student papers and presentations. The key roles and importance of well-trained and practiced social workers and other health care providers, administrators, planners and policy makers in assuring equitable treatment and protecting individuals, communities and societies, provide the central rationale for this course.

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