CCE 57
Approaching Ethical Dilemmas in Healthcare Winter 2025

Are you considering a career in healthcare or in bioethics? Are you curious about the ethical dilemmas that healthcare professionals encounter? This course will provide an introduction to core bioethics topics such as informed consent, surrogate decision-making, advance care planning, and controversial interventions at the end of life. Students also will learn a framework for thinking through ethical dilemmas in healthcare, and will apply it to practice cases. Each class will start with a lecture about a core topic. Students then will break into small groups to work through practice cases, or to discuss multiple perspectives on controversial topics. Classes will end with students reconvening in the big group to share their insights. Outside of class, students will learn about core topics from published articles, legal cases, podcasts, and other online materials. Some cases will require additional research done outside of class. Students will complete a final project of their choosing which could include a presentation on a bioethics topic not discussed in class, a case analysis, a presentation or review of a book with ethical overtones, or a presentation or review of a film with ethics themes. Please note that this class will focus predominantly on cases involving adult patients, not adolescent or pediatric patients.