Revised 08/2018

HLT 145 - Ethics for Healthcare Personnel (2 CR.)

Course Description

Focuses on ethical concepts of health care. Emphasizes confidentiality, maintaining patient records, personal appearance, professionalism with patients/clients, associates, and an awareness of health care facilities. Lecture 2 hours per week. 2 credits

General Course Purpose

The purpose of this course is to provide students with introductory knowledge and skills as it relates to accountable professional behavior that encourages the student to reflect, respond and resolve ethical and socio-cultural issues that students will confront during their matriculation and in the professional arena.

Course Prerequisites/Corequisites

None.

Course Objectives

Upon the completion of this course, the student should be able to:

  • Identify and comprehend traditional and current issues in Biomedical Ethics;
  • Define the main areas of ethical discourse;
  • Discuss theories of ethics: teleological and deontological.
  • Develop skills of critical ethical analysis of contemporary moral problems in medicine and health care.
  • Analyze and respond to the comments of other students regarding philosophical issues.
  • Identify some of the basic content in the field of ethics, to include vocabulary, concepts, and theories.
  • Articulate an awareness and understanding of ethics.
  • Demonstrate and summarize main areas of philosophic discourse
  • Develop and demonstrate skills of critical analysis and dialectical thinking used in analyzing cases and dilemmas, in forming and defending positions, and analyzing and responding to the comments of other students regarding ethical issues.

Major Topics to Be Included

  • Patient Care Partnership
  • Vulnerable Populations.
  • Confidentiality.
  • The Medical Record.
  • Patients’ rights under HIPAA and privacy standards.
  • Ethics and the Workplace.
  • Liability and Health Care.
  • Matters of Life and Death.
  • Legal Aspects of Health Care.
  • Controversial Issues in Health Care to include stem cell research, organ allocation, abortion and assisted
  • suicide.