HLEQ 325 Healthcare Ethics and Social Inequality

In this course students explore healthcare ethics with a special emphasis on how social inequality affects ethical deliberation and ethics consultations. The course reviews major ethical traditions, ideas, and frameworks that have shaped contemporary approaches to healthcare ethics in morally pluralistic contexts. Topics include prominent frameworks in healthcare ethics (such as virtue, principlist, narrative, and consequentialist approaches) that emphasize multiple aspects of ethical decision making (social context, medical indications, patient preference, and quality of life). Through exploration of case studies, students identify relevant ethical considerations, apply ethical theory to concrete challenges in clinical practice, and learn skills necessary to effectively conduct an ethics consultation.