IS - 452 Health Care Ethics Critical Thinking

This didactic course covers ethical issues that Allied Health professionals can expect to encounter during their education and career. It covers such areas of concern as professionalism, cultural differences, confidentiality, informed consent, responsible practice, handling mistakes, difficult cases, and key legal aspects of these issues. To assist students in resolving issues, the course identifies and applies key principles of critical thinking. The course trains students in the use of these principles in ethics and professionalism. The course is designed to improve the ability of students to reason soundly in professional ethics, to be familiar with the health professional ethics literature, and to communicate clearly about ethical values, integrity, and judgment. At the same time, the course is intended to provide a broad context to the daily issues of professional life, and to present the historical richness of the debates over ethical issues. Much of health care involves critical thinking: being able to identify the relevant features of a situation, propose and assess the virtues of various solutions, and make recommendations based on an analysis of the possible actions. This process requires an individual to engage in a process of rational reflection quite different from the skill set utilized in asking a scientific question. Students who complete this course will have a greater understanding of the process of rational reflection and how to analyze a problem using both deductive and inductive reasoning. Students will become comfortable with the concept that there may not be simply one right answer for every problem, but rather a range of acceptable action. Students will be able to point to common fallacies in arguments and will argue for their own position. Critical thinking augments scientific reasoning by giving students the tools that they need in order to make critical distinctions in the applied science of medicine. By introducing students to the process of critical thinking, participants will be able to get acclimated to the academic challenges of higher education. Prerequisite: Admission to the Department. Credit Hours: (5)