Course Title: Nursing Ethics and Health Care
Part A: Course Overview
Course Title: Nursing Ethics and Health Care
Credit Points: 12.00
Course Code |
Campus |
Career |
School |
Learning Mode |
Teaching Period(s) |
NURS1045 |
Bundoora Campus |
Postgraduate |
150H Health Sciences |
Face-to-Face |
Sem 2 2006, Sem 1 2007, Sem 1 2008, Sem 1 2009 |
Course Coordinator: Professor Eleanor Holroyd
Course Coordinator Phone: +61 3 9925 7179
Course Coordinator Email: eleanor.holroyd@rmit.edu.au
Course Coordinator Availability: By apppointment
Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities
There is no formal pre-requisite for this course. However, you will be expected to bring to the course your knowledge and experience as a practising health care professional and the challenges you have faced in dealing with ethical issues arising in the course of your everyday practice. The course has also been designed to build on and develop your knowledge and understanding of nursing and health care ethics that you may have acquired in an undergraduate or staff development program.
Course Description
This course provides students with an opportunity to develop ethical practice capabilities congruent with those demonstrated by nurses working either as advanced clinicians, managers, or eductors in the health care sector and to continually develop and transform ethical professional practice through the process of critical evaluation and reflection. Through formal lectures, open class discussions, guided reading, self-directed learning and prescribed assessment tasks, students will develop critical thinking skills crucial to the task of identifying and responding effectively to ethical and related legal issues in the work place. Using ethical principlism and human rights as a decision-making framework, this course gives particular attention to the topics of: the relationship between law, ethics and standards of professional practice; accountability and responsibility in professional practice; cross-cultural ethics; patients’ rights to: health care, being treated with respect; informed consent, surrogate decision making and medical paternalism; privacy and confidentiality; abortion; euthanasia/assisted suicide, end of life decision-making and dying with dignity; mental health care ethics and suicide ethics; reporting child abuse; conscientious objection, whistleblowing and ’taking a stand’ (moral activism). Processes for identifying and resolving moral problems in nursing and related health care settings are also considered. In advancing critical discussion on these and related topics, students are encouraged to draw on their own experiences in professional practice. Case exemplars drawn from real life scenarios in nursing and general health care contexts are also used to inform class discussions.
Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development
The dimensions of capability developed in the course include:
- 4. Professional responsibility and accountability to make ethical decisions
- 8. Engaging in reflective practice and professional development of self and others
At the completion of the course you should be able to:
- Discuss critically the ethical dimensions of nursing and health care practice
- Examine critically key ethical issues occurring in nursing and related health care contexts
- Examine critically the nature and role of ethical theories in guiding sound ethical decision making in workplace settings
- Discuss critically processes for achieving desired moral outcomes in nursing and healthcare domains
- Explore the application of lateral and critical thinking processes to moral problem-solving in professional practice domains
- Examine critically and learn from past and present experiences of dealing with ethical issues, both of self and others to extend professional and personal selves
- Discuss critically assumptions and prejudices that may impact on ethical professional development and practice
The underpinning knowledge and skill developed in the course includes:
- Knowledge of and skills to discuss critically the ethical dimensions of nursing and health care practice
- Knowledge of and skills to examine critically key ethical issues occurring in nursing and related health care contexts
- Knowledge of and skills to examine critically the nature and role of ethical theories in guiding sound ethical decision making in workplace settings
- Knowledge of and skills to examine critically processes for achieving desired moral outcomes in nursing and health care domains
- Skill in utilising library data storage and accessing information from libraries and electronic data bases
- Skills to explore the application of lateral and critical thinking processes to moral problem-solving in professional practice domains
- Skills to examine critically and learn from past and present experiences of dealing with ethical issues, both of self and others to extend professional and personal selves
- Skills to explore and discuss critically assumptions and prejudices that may impact on ethical professional development and practice
Overview of Learning Activities
Key concepts and ethical theories and their application to and in nursing and health care domains will be explained and examined critically via: seminars, open class discussions, case exemplars, directed learning exercises, additional readings. These learning activities will provide an opportunity for you to explore yours and others experiences and ideas about ethical issues in nursing and health care as well as how they might best be approached and resolved.
Overview of Learning Resources
- Course documents available via myRMIT Studies
- List of recommended readings and pertinent website addresses
Overview of Assessment
Your ability to understand key ethical concepts and theories and their application to and in nursing and health care domains will be assessed by two written assignments:
(i) Critique of a journal article addressing a substantive ethical issue
(ii) Critical essay on a practice related ethical issue
Suggested reading lists for each of these assignments will be provided and can be accessed via myRMIT Studies