Syllabus
There are four lectures and eight seminaries in this semester. The topics of the lectures are as follows: 1. Informed Consent. The Principle of Autonomy. Paternalism and Partnership. The Rights of the Patients, the Duty of the Physicians. 2. Death and philosophical thinking. Criteria of Death. Organ Donation for Transplantation: opting in, opting out, required request and routine salvaging. 3. Ethics and AIDS. Contemporary situation in the U.S.A., sub-saharan Africa and in the Czech rep. The switch from opting-in to opting-out. 4. Ethical Questions concerning infectious diseases and epidemiology.
The Topics of the seminaries are these: 1. The Human Body - shift of perception of the human body (anatomy and art). Human Body - experience of the corporeity; nakedness and deformity. 2. Pain and Suffering. The Search of Meaningness. 3. Death and Dying. Mortal Body; Images of Finality and Demise in the Art. The Search of Infiniteness. 4. The Spirituality of the Dying Patients. The Care of the Elderly Patients. Intensive Care and the End of the Human Life. 5. Hospice Movement. Palliative Care. Patient as a Bio-Psycho-Socio-Spiritual Being. 6. Advance Directives, living will, Health care proxy. DNR. Substitute decision making, Best interest. Dysthanasia. Patient in the PVS, "killing" and "letting die". 7. Communication with the Patient: truth communication, especially to the Patients with Cancer. The Trust between the Physician and the Patient. Which kind of Informations a patient can (should, must) know? 8. Medical Futility. The Shift form the Curative to the Palliative Care. Quantitative and the Qualitative Futility. The "good" of the Physician and the "good" of the Patient.
Annotation
The very specific problems of contemporary medical ethics are dealt with in this course, with special attention to both of ends of human life. The speciality of this course is the fact that conferences are tought by experts specialized on a different types of ethical dilemmas in medicine, from assisted reproduction to problems concerning advance directives and euthanasia.
There are courses concerning not only ethics, but also economy and law. The seminars are lead likewise by the physicians from different clinics and departments, for example hematooncology, burns medicine, psychiatry etc. and general practicioners as well.
We are honoured to say, that the form and content of this course is extraordinarily attractive for our medical students and highly estimated by them as well.