Healthcare Ethics and Law

Through this unit, you will develop the skills and knowledge needed to address ethical questions with confidence, and learn how to apply them to a range of healthcare-related issues.

Learning outcomes:

• Deepen your understanding of the relevance of philosophical bioethics to decision making in a healthcare setting.
• Develop your appreciation and understanding of philosophical bioethics and its use when applied in the context of healthcare decision making.
• Become acquainted with philosophical arguments in the context of a ‘practical’ healthcare dilemma.
• Develop your skills in understanding and presenting clear arguments.

Course unit outline:

• Introduction to philosophical bioethics, moral philosophy and health care ethics
• Doing bioethics
• Beings, human beings and persons
• The status of the embryo and its implications for abortion
• Respect for persons: Autonomy, consent and confidentiality
• Paternalism, autonomy and respect for persons
• Competency and consent
• Autonomy and pregnancy
• Resource allocation
• Assisted dying and euthanasia

Through this unit, you will develop a sound understanding of the role of the law in regulating healthcare practice, in identifying and enforcing the rights of patients and in seeking to resolve ethical dilemmas in medicine.

You will develop your ability to appreciate how fundamental principles of law are applied in a particularly complex social context and will be introduced to how the law deals with problems of healthcare ethics.

You will receive an introduction to key principles of health care law in England and Wales such as patient autonomy and the obligation of confidentiality. In this unit, we will also consider the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the law governing access to health care and negligence claims.

Learning outcomes:

• Know the relevant case law and legislation and their relationship to the ethical debate.
• Become familiar with current literature and research in this area.
• Enhance your skills in analysing the role of law in areas of social concern and controversy.
• Establish the foundations to enable you to undertake further independent study in greater depth.

Course unit outline:

• Introduction to law and legal research
• Law and health care practice
• Healthcare and human rights
• Consent to treatment: autonomy and consent
• Consent to treatment: informed consent
• Refusal of treatment: competence to consent and
• Treating mentally incapacitated patients
• Confidentiality and health care
• Confidentiality and privacy
• Clinical negligence (i)
• Clinical negligence (ii)
• Access to health care
• Criminalising medicine

Through this unit, you will develop your understanding of healthcare law and ethics in a global context. It will enable you to critically analyse differing national responses to universal problems in the healthcare context and to consider the factors that contribute to these responses.

You will develop your capacity for critical analysis and logical thinking.

Learning outcomes:

• Develop a range of transferable and generic skills in problem-solving and reasoning, computer literacy, time management and written communication.
• Develop a detailed and advanced knowledge of how different nations have responded to the same healthcare issues.
• Develop an understanding of existing regulations and conventions which operate across national boundaries.
• Enhance your ability to reflect on and critically analyse a range of issues, specifically in relation to the differing national responses to healthcare issues.
• Reflect on and critically analyse the extent to which, if at all, universal ‘codes’ are workable in this context.

Course unit outline:

• Universal problems, diverse responses: an introduction
• National cultures and medical law
• What does international law have to do with health?
• Globalising bioethics
• Public health ethics and law in a global context
• International regulation of biotechnologies
• Cross-border access to healthcare and healthcare tourism
• Cross-border reproduction
• Live organ donation and sales

Through this unit, you will gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of the historical development of research ethics - the main international guidelines in this field, and the main arguments specific to topical areas of research ethics.

Learning outcomes:

• Develop an understanding of the history of research ethics.
• Understand the contents of the main international and national guidelines in this field.
• Develop an understanding of the main types of arguments used in the research ethics field and the main areas of controversy.

Course unit outline:

• History of research ethics
• The current research ethics framework
• Research ethics committees
• Medical research and the law
• Ethical implication of clinical research designs
• Medical research: vulnerable participants
• Research ethics in developing countries
• HIV research and informed consent
• Using unethical data - the Nazi experiments
• Research ethics outside the health care field

This unit will present, and encourage you, to engage with key moral debates relating to the development and use of genetic technologies. We look into storage of tissue and its uses, incidental findings arising from research or even a medical check-up. We ask if there is an ethical or legal hierarchy to accessing sensitive genetic information and what are the effects on the criminal justice and insurance. We cover the ethical issues around personalised medicine and ask questions on the moral permissibility of human cloning and the use of genetic manipulation in and of plants, and nonhuman and human animals.

Through this unit, you will gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of the historical development of research ethics, the main international guidelines in this field, and the main arguments specific to topical areas of research ethics

Learning outcomes:

• Develop an understanding of the history of research ethics.
• Understand the contents of the main international and national guidelines in this field.
• Develop an understanding of the main types of arguments used in the research ethics field and the main areas of controversy.

Course unit outline:

• Ethics, genetics and genomics: an introduction
• Genetics and genomics and the existing legal and ethical framework
• Incidental findings
• Genetic storage and biobanking
• Prenatal genetic testing, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and newborn screening
• Human genetic manipulation 1: therapy
• Human genetic manipulation 2: enhancement
• Personalised medicine
• Cloning
• Synthetic biology

This unit will introduce a range of philosophies and ideologies that underpin mental health legislation, past and present. Through this unit, you will develop your understanding of law and policy on mental health issues in England and Wales.

You will be encouraged to develop textual research skills and to work collaboratively with fellow peers.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand the scope and application of English mental health law and its relevance to a range of academic disciplines and emerging policy initiatives.
• Examine the effectiveness of mental health law by reference to principles/philosophies from relevant disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, ethics, criminology, social policy).
• Articulate your knowledge in written and oral form.
• Make effective use of a range of paper and electronic legal research tools to support your learning and research.

Course unit outline:

• Introduction to mental health law; theories of mental disorder
• MHA civil admission part 1
• MHA civil admission part 2
• MHA criminal admission
• The MHA and MCA: Treatment for physical and mental ill-health
• Detention under the MCA
• Supervision and control
• Access to justice

In this unit, you will study further key topics in healthcare law, such as how the law approaches the medical care of children and adolescents, the law surrounding reproductive technologies and the use of human embryos in research and treatment.

You will reflect on the knowledge you have developed during Medico-Legal Problems and consider how ethics and law relate in controversial areas of health care.

Learning outcomes:

• Develop a knowledge of the relevant case law, statutory materials and their relationship to the ethical debate.
• Become familiar with current literature and research in the areas studied.
• Enhance your skills in analysing the role of law in areas of social concern and controversy.
• Gain exposure to a range of relevant literature and develop your own research skills.
• Establish the necessary foundations to enable you to undertake further independent study in greater depth.

Course unit outline:

• Families, medicine and the law
• Parental responsibility and young children
• Adolescent autonomy
• Regulating the reproductive technologies
• Surrogacy
• Abortion
• Research and therapeutic uses of human embryos
• Health care law: present and future

Students registered on the LLM should choose a dissertation topic which is predominantly law-focused, whereas those on the MA can choose to focus on law or ethics or adopt a blended approach.

You will be allocated an academic supervisor who will provide support and guidance during this part of your studies. Your dedicated supervisor will help you to refine your research question and will provide feedback on draft sections of the dissertation.

The dissertation is 10-12,000 words long and is submitted in early September of Year 2.