Ethical Problems in Health Care, Social Services, & Public Policy

Ethical Problems in Health Care, Social Services, & Public Policy

(6 CEUs for Full Day; 3 CEUs for the Half-Day Course)

Course Description

This course is an investigation of some of the ethical and practical problems attending institutions, such as public health services, that seek to meet basic human needs. Social service professional see working for positive social change as a significant part of their mission. This work inevitably involves an effort to make health care policy and practice, as well as the policy and practice of other social services, more effective and more equitable. The task is made particularly interesting by the fact that social service professionals often find themselves as it were on both sides of the fence - having to be mindful of their own professional conduct in the provision of social services as well as striving to improve the quality of social services in general. The main goal of the course is an understanding of the ethical problems that affect these institutions, in order to help social service professionals to better do this profoundly important work.

Learning Objectives

Participants who complete this course should be able to:

• Describe some of the principal ethical problems that attend such institutions as public health services
• Identify the principal themes of the Code of Ethics of NASW and show how they apply to such problems
• Clearly articulate the responsibility of social workers to effect positive social change
• Identify the main ethical obligations of caregivers
• Discuss the responsibility of the community to provide essential services to its members who are in need
• Identify the principal ethical concepts that underlie the responsibilities and obligations discussed in this course

Bibliography and suggestions for further reading

Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Approved by the 1996 NASW Delegate Assembly and revised by the 1999 NASW Delegate Assembly.
www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp

DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition, text revision. American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Sir David Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Beauchamp, Tom L. and LeRoy Walters, eds. Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 6th ed.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2003.

Feinberg, Joel. Social Philosophy. Prentice-Hall, 1973.

Kant, Immanuel. Foundations (or Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
There are many editions currently available.

Mappes, Thomas and Jane Zembaty, eds. Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. See especially Chapter 1, “Abortion”; Chapter 2, “Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide”; Chapter 6, “Drug Control and Addiction”; and Chapter 7, “Social and Economic Justice”.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism (1863). There are many editions currently available of the entire book, often as a part of a collection of readings.

Rachels, James. Elements of Moral Philosophy. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press, 1971.

Reamer, Frederic G. Ethical Standards in Social Work. NASW Press, 1998.

Shanahan, Timothy and Robin Wang, eds. Reason and Insight - Western and Eastern Perspectives on the Pursuit of Moral Wisdom. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Cyrus Hoy ed., 2nd edition. W. W. Norton, 1992.