Course overview
Using a cross-disciplinary lens, students will engage in critical analysis of the intersection between the law and broad-based public health policy. They will examine the legal, social and ethical arguments underpinning the legal framework for the protection of patients, the duties imposed on health care practitioners, and the promotion of best practice in the health care sector. This will extend to the exploration of current debates and emerging legal and policy issues regarding the challenges faced in balancing the competing interests implicated when law is applied to health care. The course therefore places considerable emphasis on investigating how Health Law supports or impedes the delivery of social justice regarding the allocation of high-quality health services to the population and particularly vulnerable population cohorts. Students will also reinforce and enhance their problem-solving skills by applying Health Law to complex real life problem scenarios, and they will learn how to communicate their analysis to both legal and non-legal professionals.
Course learning outcomes
- Describe the legal framework governing Australia’s health care system including funding, medical insurance and how medical professionals are regulated
- Explain and apply the legal and ethical duties of medical professionals to their patients (including their duties of care and confidentiality) to resolve typical problems arising in the healthcare setting
- Analyse and integrate intersecting medical, ethical and legal principles that govern health care decision making in complex situations such as the care of vulnerable populations, end of life care, assisted dying and organ transplantation
- Write a logically constructed, clearly worded, evidence-based report directed to a professional or regulatory medical body
- Compile and analyse medical-legal literature and primary legal resources to support the analysis of principles governing health care decision making, and produce a substantial written work based on that research