Syllabus
- Basic concepts: ethics, bioethics, medical ethics, ethics in health care
- Ethical theory: hedonism, utilitarismus, Kant and deontology, moral values, ethics virtues
- Man as being a person: an empirical functionalism and ontological personalism
- The four principles of medical ethics: beneficence, Nonmaleficence, autonomy, justice
- The principle of double effect
- Conscience
- The beginning of human life: assisted reproduction, embryonic stem cells, therapeutic and reproductive cloning
- End of human life: death and dying, the definition and criteria of death, removal of organs from the dead, advance directives, living will, DNR
- Euthanasia, assisted suicide. Letting die.
- The question of legalizing euthanasia in the Czech Republic
- Hippocratic Oath and hippocraticum corpus. The Geneva Declaration. Nuremberg Code. Helsinki Convention. The Lisbon Declaration. The Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe.
- Code of Ethics of the Czech Medical Chamber.
Annotation
The course introduces to the main ethical theories (hedonism, utilitarismus, empiricism, deontology, moral values etc.), with special emphasis on ethics in nursing. In the field of medical ethics, attention is drawn to the four principles of medical ethics, in particular the principle of autonomy.
The students will become more familiar with the application of these ethical theories in selected dilemmas of current medical ethics (the disclosure of truth, informed consent, both ends of human life etc.). The course will also inform about major medical conventions and agreements in force, both in the world and in Czech Republic.