aVLME081 Medical Ethics & Communication Skills

Faculty of Medicine
spring 2025

The course is not taught in spring 2025

Extent and Intensity
0/1.3/0. 3 credit(s). Type of Completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
doc. MUDr. Jan Maláska, Ph.D., EDIC (seminar tutor)
Guaranteed by
doc. MUDr. Jan Maláska, Ph.D., EDIC
Department of Simulation Medicine – Theoretical Departments – Faculty of Medicine
Supplier department: Department of Simulation Medicine – Theoretical Departments – Faculty of Medicine
Prerequisites (in Czech)
aVLLP0633c Clinical Introduction III - p || VLLP0633c Clinical Introduction III - practice
aVLLP0633c (for General Medicine students) or VLLP0633c (for students studying in Czech), recommended for 4.-6. year
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The course will introduce students to the fundamental questions and themes in modern medical ethics and communication skills.
While courses of medical ethics usually start with a description and characterization of normative ethical theories and then go on to apply these theories to thought experiments and real-case problems, this course will adopt a bottom-up approach. It will begin by describing some concrete dilemmatic cases and will gradually work through discussion and active engagement of all course participants to basic moral concepts, values, and theories. Special emphasis will be laid on the dialogic and interactive structure of the course. In addition to providing students with an introductory-level knowledge of medical ethics, the course will help develop their critical reading and thinking skills through an emphasis on thesis and argument analysis. The course, in its second part, will reflect on the current pandemic and will explore various aspects such as delivering serious news, the importance of self-care for healthcare professionals, allocation of scarce resources during the pandemic, and challenges for palliative care.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Explain and evaluate some of the major ethical theories, especially consequentialism, deontology, and the ethical theory of natural law.
- Apply acquired theoretical knowledge to concrete cases in medical practice.
- Explain and analyse the moral dimension of everyday medical decision-making (micro-ethics).
- Identify fundamental values underlying medical practice, analyse them, and commensurate them.
- Ask relevant, critical questions about moral arguments, both about their validity and soundness.
- Identify the most common argumentation fallacies that may be encountered in moral philosophy.
- Make all-things-considered moral judgments about particular cases and support them by normative concepts and theories.
- Name at least three examples of how to acknowledge and validate emotions in patient physician encounter
- Screen patients for information preferences, caregiver assessment and values and preferences.
- Analyse the needs of patients and healthcare professionals in model situations, name basic tenets of self-care and professionalism.
Syllabus
  • Topics
  • 1. Course introduction, basic moral concepts, values, and theories.
  • 2. Informed consent.
  • 3. Euthanasia and end-of-life decisions.
  • 4. The beginning of human life, abortion, and stem cell research.
  • 5. Basic communication skills - screening
  • 6. Breaking bad news - G-U-I-D-E protocol (vitaltalk)
  • 7. Self-care for professionals in the time of a pandemic
  • 8. Allocation of scarce resources during a pandemic
  • 9. Excess mortality during the COVID pandemic - challenge for palliative care
  • 10. Upon votes of participants: concept of goals of care/appropriate care/treatment limitations in the ICU or meaningful connections between patients/relatives in a pandemic
  • 11. Wrap up of the course, Q&A
Literature
    recommended literature
  • 2. Sensible Medicine-Balancing Intervention and Inaction During the COVID-19 Pandemic. JAMA. 2020;324(18):1827-1828. Listen to the podcast https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/18552182
  • Pre-course recommended listening: JAMA podcast - conversations with Dr. Bauchner, editor-in-chief of JAMA. Join Howard Bauchner, MD, each week as he interviews leading researchers and thinkers in health care about their recent JAMA articles. Go beyond
  • 1. Truog RD et al.: The Toughest Triage - Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic. N Engl J Med 2020; 382:1973-1975
Teaching methods
online course of 1. LF UK (Faculty of Medicine, Charles University)
Assessment methods
credit (80% of submitted google forms with reflections on the assigned topic for each of the lectures, up to 250 words)
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Information on the extent and intensity of the course: 20.
Teacher's information
enrolled students will be sent a link to log in and access the online course
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/med/spring2025/aVLME081