Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds

HSC 5656

COURSE TITLE:

Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds

COURSE OVERVIEW:

This course is part of the Certificate in Health Care Ethics, a 4-course graduate certificate available through UWF's School of Allied Health and Life Sciences. All area health care practitioners or students of health care are encouraged to enroll. The focus of this certificate is on critical ethical issues facing health care providers, patients and their families. Dr. Gretchen Norling currently serves as the Director of the Association for Health Care Ethics. The certificate consists of four related courses that deal with currently important issues in health care ethics:
1. Current Issues in Medicine - This course focuses on an examination of philosophical issues that arise in conceptualizing the aims and practices of medicine.
2. Life, Illness and Death - This course will explore conflicting world views related to the confrontation of illness, suffering and death in the health care setting. Clinically relevant case studies will be employed.
3. Theoretical Foundations of Health Care Ethics - This is a course illuminating major ethical theories and their relation to health care ethics. The application and viability of these theoretical models will be tested with respect to training and professional practice in health care.
4. Clinical Ethics Grand Rounds - Students will participate in grand rounds with specified health care professionals. In response to various cases presented at ethics grand rounds, students will participate in mock round table bioethics consultations and committees. A clinical ethics case study is required.

INSTRUCTOR:

Dr. Grethchen Norling, Ph.D.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

gnorling@uwf.edu

PREREQUISITES OR COREQUISITES:

Those interested in this course and/or the Health Care Ethics Certificate Program should contact Dr. Gretchen Norling at gnorling@uwf.edu.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course provides actual cases from practitioners which will be discussed utilizing a variety of ethical methodologies.

STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES (Objectives):

At the close of the course, the student will be well-versed in the clinical case presentation and the consultation/decision-making process.

TOPICS COVERED:

1. Challenges and Potential of End of Life Care
2. Underlying Values and Assumptions
3. Humanistic End of Life Care
4. Death and Dignity
5. Partnerships in the Care of the Dying
6. Nonabandonment
7. Delivering Bad News
8. Discussing Palliative Care with Patients
9. Palliative Care for patients with severe dementia
10. Physician assisted suicide
11. Hospice and Palliative Care
12. Double Effect
13. Palliative Options of Last Resort
14. End of life care in the U.S. and elsewhere
15. First Do NO Harm

REQUIRED TEXTS:

• Care for Patients at the End of Life, by Timothy Quill, M.D.
  Oxford University Press; (March 2001)
  ISBN: 0195139402
• First Do No Harm, by Lisa Belkin
  Fawcett Books; Reprint edition (April 1994)
  ISBN: 044922290X

GRADING/EVALUATION:

• 25% 5-10 page paper analyzing a clinical case presentation brought to class by practitioner
• 25% 2-5 10 page paper discussing a case from your own practice or life experience utilizing the methods offered in the course
• 25% attendance, participation, attentiveness to individual need and comment, bringing of helpful, germane materials to class
• 25% Take Home Final Exam