The module focuses analytical attention on a series of distinct, yet interconnected, ethical and legal issues which arise in the practice of medicine/healthcare in a variety of scenarios and in which individual and collective rights are frequently in contention. In particularly it aims to:

• To develop students’ understanding of the legal and ethical principles involved in medical/healthcare events and decision making processes and to appreciate the complex and sometimes conflicting practical and moral tensions behind such principles.
• Raise student awareness of ‘solution-resistant’ legal and ethical dilemmas and their philosophical, political, social and cultural underpinnings.
• Induce appreciation of relationship between cultures, vocabularies and concepts in medical law and ethics and how relationship manifests in a medical/healthcare context.

• Critically evaluate the doctrinal coherence and significance of a body of statutes and/or case law, including that relating to consent, mental capacity, beginning of life, end of life, organ donation and the connection between law, healthcare and popular culture.
• Identify, critically evaluate and prioritise the significance of the legal and ethical problems explicitly or implicitly raised by any of the module’s topics and present possible, ethically supportable solutions to them;
• Identify and reflect upon philosophical, political, and socio-economic underpinnings of the law and policies in medicine and health care;
• Conduct independently effective research from the primary and secondary sources on issues of law and ethics relevant to the topic(s) under consideration;
• Formulate, on the basis of that research, accurate, critical and reasoned statements of the strengths and weaknesses of judicial reasoning, relevant law, ethical considerations, and the views of learned authors;
• Apply and appraise those responses so as to reach a critically considered conclusion on the issue(s) under scrutiny – including proposals for changing the law or medical practice – in a way which demonstrates sensitivity to law’s ethical, social, cultural and political context and awareness of international legal rights and obligations.

A mixture of lectures and tutorials 

• Competently undertake reasonably straight-forward research tasks with minimum guidance and demonstrate the ability to further develop written and oral communication skills (lucidity, comprehension, and due regard to the rules of English grammar, punctuation, spelling and syntax).
• Demonstrate the ability to work independently and interact effectively within a team and learning group;
• Use a range of electronic source materials and demonstrate a professional level of competency in IT skills when preparing and presenting written and oral material;
• Recognise the need for further learning as necessary;
• Manage time effectively to prepare the coursework to a strict deadline.

Summative assessment comprises of an open book exam during the summer examination session. Students will be entitled to bring one lever-arch file consisting of their own notes and materials into the examination. This tests critical knowledge of medical law and ethics. It requires reflexive analysis informed and supported by relevant authorities and the presentation of coherent reasoned arguments and conclusions. Students will be required to answer three questions on the examination at least one of which must be an essay and one of which must be a problem question.

TOPIC 1 Introduction to Healthcare Law and Bioethics

TOPIC 2 Consent and Mental Capacity I

TOPIC 3 Consent and Mental Capacity II

TOPIC 4 Beginning of Life

TOPIC 5 End of Life decisions I (Withdrawing and Withholding Treatment)

TOPIC 6 End of Life decisions II (Assisted Dying)

TOPIC 7 Organ Donation

TOPIC 8 Medical Law and Ethics in film and art

Students will be asked to read one of the following:

1 Emily Jackson, Medical Law: Text, Cases, and Materials, OUP 2010.

2. Lewis Vaughn, Bioethics, OUP 2012

3. Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, OUP 2012.

4. Mason and McCall Smith’s Law and Medical Ethics (Oxford)

5. Brazier and Cave’s Medicine Patients and the Law (Penguin)

1  Smith, et. al. Re-writing Medical Law (Hart Bloomsbury)

2 Harris, J: The Value of Life (RKP)

3 Marc Stauch, Text, Cases and Materials on Medical Law and Ethics, Routledge 2012.

4 B. Steinbock, The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, OUP 2009.

5 Shaun D. Pattinson, Medical law and ethics, London: Sweet & Maxwell/Thomson Reuters, 2011.

6 Blackstone’s Statutes on Medical Law.