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General
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Medical Ethics Online Homepage
Introduction
With advances in science and technology, the demands for and expectations of healthcare are changing rapidly. The need to provide good quality, safe and affordable care is putting increasing pressure on policymakers, professionals and the public, and this is now severely testing the clinician-patient relationship. While there are many reasons for this situation, one reason relates to the limited knowledge and understanding of issues of professionalism and ethics. This course is our modest effort to try and address this deficit.
The course is designed to cover key constituent parts of medical ethics. It is suitable for any healthcare professional wanting to acquire a basic grounding in the subject. It is designed for self-directed learning, with opportunities for learners to test their knowledge and understanding at regular intervals, after working through the materials for each group of Modules. The course avoids jargon, as far as possible, and it generally has a practical bias with a theoretical underpinning.
The course is designed to help you:
- Promote more ethical practice in clinical medicine and restore clinical-patient trust.
- Highlight developments in the UK and India, and provide learning relevant to other clinical professionals and to other countries.
The course has been developed by an international team, coordinated by Dr Roger Worthington, and has been adopted from Peoples-uni. It was further developed by NextGenU.org (NGU).
There are five (5) modules to complete, which include:
Module 1: Rights and Responsibilities
Module 2: Ethico-Legal Frameworks
Module 3: Beginning and End-of-Life
Module 4: Governance
Module 5: HealthcareApproximate time for completion of this course is 7 hours at an average reading rate of 144 words/minute.
Engaging with this course
- To register for this course, complete the registration form. Begin the course with Module 1. For each lesson, read the description.
- Each lesson comprises introductory remarks. You can click on the collections of resources in each module.
- There is a forum on each module for reflection, and you will be able to add a new topic or respond to a previous one. You may want to share your learning from this and other readings, comment on the topics from your own experience, comment on others' posts, or provide feedback on how we can improve the content and/or presentation.
- There is a final quiz to assess your understanding of some important concepts. Click on the hyperlinks to take you to these items in each topic.
Requirements to obtain the certificate
You may browse this course for free to learn for your personal enrichment. There are no requirements.
To obtain a certificate, a learner must successfully complete:
- All reading requirements
- All quizzes, passing with 70%, having unlimited attempts
- All discussion forums
- The final exam with a minimum of 70% and a maximum of 3 attempts and
- The self and course evaluation forms
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Module 1: Rights and Responsibilities
This Module contains two main themes:
- Duties and obligations of the clinician, including an introduction to patient rights and Autonomy, consent, confidentiality, and the role of family.
2 Files -
Module 2: Ethico-Legal Frameworks
This Module contains three main themes:
- Ethical and legal frameworks.
- Mental health and questions around capacity and
- Understanding risk and questions of disclosure.
3 Files, 1 Forum -
Module 3: Beginning and End-of-Life
This Module contains two main themes:
- Advance directives and the right to refuse care and Issues around the beginning and end of life, including DNR.
2 Files -
Module 4: Governance
This Module contains three main themes:
Research governance and protocols for the protection of human subjects
Negligence, misconduct and boundaries of responsibility and
Probity and professionalism, including honesty and transparency.
3 Files -
Module 5: Healthcare
This Module contains two main themes:
Healthcare organization and questions of justice and
Essentials of public health and policy
2 Files -
Course and Self Evaluation & Certificate
In this section, you can provide feedback about this course to help us make NextGenU.org better. Once evaluations are completed, you will be able to download your Certificate of Completion.
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Quiz, Feedback and Certificate
Take the quiz and then, give us some feedback about the course and what it has meant for you.
You can earn a certificate if you have passed the quiz and given us some feedback (below).