The Department of Bioethics offers a graduate program leading to the degree of Master of Arts in Bioethics. Bioethics has blossomed into a major area of scholarly inquiry over the last three decades. Professionals from public health, medicine, nursing, the life sciences, law, social work, management, public policy, the social sciences, philosophy, religious studies, and other areas, have contributed to the field. The program at the CASE School of Medicine emphasizes the interdisciplinary and interprofessional nature of the field and is designed to provide advanced training in bioethics for students and professionals who anticipate encountering ethical issues in the course of their primary careers. The program has the following objectives:
To provide students with a firm understanding of the intellectual content of bioethics. This will require both that the students develop familiarity with the bioethical literature and the underlying philosophical arguments and empirical assumptions that inform it.
To allow students to understand the institutions and structures of healthcare and how they affect the ethical issues that arise in medical practice. This requires that students develop some understanding of the doctor-patient realtionship, the effect of healthcare teams on the care of patients, and the changing social and political environment of medicine.
To train students to identify and analyze a range of actual in-the-wards problems involving ethical issues and to prepare them to reflect critically upon the various methods of bioethics employed in the clinical setting, the scholarly literature, and health policy development.