What questions about right/wrong or good/bad, especially as regarding issues of medicine, life, and/or health, are involved in your topic?

My topic is patient autonomy with mental illness patients

This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcome1. Introduction to your topic
We will have had a class session devoted to general issues related to the weeks topic, so you need not run-through that again. Youll want to pick a more specific issue related to the weeks topic and dig in a bit more. For example, if the weeks topic was privacy, I could choose to do a presentation on when violating privacy is important to sound medical practice, and focus on a case in which a persons medical privacy was violated to prevent harm to others.
6 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcome2. Clarify the ethical issue involved in your topic
Here, youll want to note why your topic is important to the study of biomedical ethics. In other words, what questions about right/wrong or good/bad, especially as regarding issues of medicine, life, and/or health, are involved in your topic? Your ethical issue will likely find a conflict between some basic principles of biomedicine (hence, the ethical question of What is right or good to do? becomes a problem). In the above example on privacy, you could note that the topic involves ethical questions about when it is good or right to violate medical privacy to help mitigate harm to other people or society as a whole. This is important to biomedicine because it is a field dedicated to protecting persons from harm; but, another important practice within biomedicine is protecting patient privacy in medical matters. So, in this example, two principles of biomedicine (protecting against harm and protecting medical privacy) are in conflict.
6 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcome3. Research your topic
Through this step, you will inform yourself and your classmates about the topic you have chosen. Please include citations for the information that you present. This can look like citations if you are presenting a slideshow, or, if delivered orally can sound like, According to US News and World Reports etc. Please include at least two citations in your presentation. Using our privacy example, I might want to research a real event in which the violation of medical privacy helped mitigate public harm. Additionally, I might want to research arguments about why ones medical privacy should not be violated. Please reach out to me for any help you need regarding research for your presentation!
6 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcome4. Analyze the individuals and groups who are impacted by your ethical issue (step 2)
For this step, youll spell out who (individuals and/or groups) are involved in the ethical issue you have stipulated for step 2, and how the issue impacts them. Doing this helps you and your classmates to understand the scope of your ethical explorationthat is, the persons involved and the consequences of doing one thing or another. In our example about medical privacy, I could here indicate that a patient whose medical privacy may be violated would lose faith in or be less likely to seek medical treatment. Additionally, a medical practitioner who violated the privacy of a patient might lose patient trust or reputation in their field. Additionally, the person or persons who this medical disclosure helps save from harm could be very grateful for the violation of privacy, and consider their health much more important than anothers sense of privacy.
6 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcome5. Ethical evaluation
You will need to include at least one ethical theory or principle to evaluate what should be done about your ethical issue. If you use an ethical theory/principle not covered in class, please be sure to include correct citation. For example, on our issue of privacy, I could say the following: I will be using Utilitarianism to show how violating a patients medical privacy in order to save the general public from harm is a good, ethical thing to do because it maximizes the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. To help you, I will include example instructions for performing Utilitarian and Kantian evaluation in Module 2. This step includes two major points: 1) a brief description of an ethical theory/ principle; 2) an evaluation of your ethical issue using the ethical theory/ principle from #1 (what would this ethical theory/principle say is the right thing to do?).
6 pts
This criterion is linked to a Learning Outcome6. Objections/ rebuttals
Please include at least one objection/ counterargument and one rebuttal to your ethical evaluation. Just because, in our example, Utilitarianism says it would be good to violate medical privacy to spare others the experience of harm, doesnt mean that you or everyone else agrees. Please try to raise the argument against what your ethical evaluation says. So, in our example, since the ethical evaluation (step 5) said it was good to violate privacy, I will in this step (6) look to defend why it would not be good to violate ones medical privacy in order to save the general public from harm. Then, I will rebut this counterargument. For example, to counterargue/object to the ethical evaluation, I could explain how if a patient thought their medical privacy would be violated, they would be less likely to disclose important health information or seek treatment. To rebut this objection, I could talk about how protecting the public from harm is more important to the medical professionis the whole point of the medical professionthan keeping sacrosanct the medical privacy of one individual.
6 pts

Last Completed Projects