Master of Science in Health Care Ethics Courses

The online Master of Science in Health Care Ethics from Creighton University educates students in the historical, cultural, philosophical, political, economic, and legal aspects of bioethics. A practicum and capstone project offer the opportunity to synthesize knowledge gained into comprehensive projects.

The M.S. in Health Care Ethics consists of 30 credit hours—27 hours of core courses and 3 hours of electives.

Core Courses

MHE 601 Health Policy (3 credits)
An exploration of health policy and its development, emphasizing social justice and human rights as providing the moral and ethical bases of policy. The course considers and compares institutional, local, regional, national, and international approaches to public health, health systems, and determination of research and development priorities. American health systems, their operations, processes, successes and failures are extensively analyzed. The processes and challenges for making policy at institutional, state and federal levels are described, and past and current attempts at health systems reform, and why they succeed or fail, are analyzed.

MHE 602 Research Ethics (3 credits) 
This course will enhance students' understanding of core ethical issues in research ethics. Vulnerable populations will be a primary organizing theme. Study of historically pivotal cases will lead into examination of ethical and policy responses. Examples are the Belmont Report, the Helsinki Declaration, IRBs (Institutional Review Boards) and roles of ethical theories, principles and human rights. Among issues related to vulnerable populations will be research on prisoners, women, children, the poor and residents of developing countries. A focus will be ethical issues in the emerging area of Community-Based Participatory Research. Topics in scientific research will include design (e.g., randomized or placebo-controlled trials), elements of good science, critical reflection about science (such as critiques of objectivity) and conflicts of interest. A section will address informed consent. Special topics will include collaborative and intersectoral research, cross-cultural aspects of research, social responsibility of scientists, genetics and stem cell research. USA and global research will be considered.

MHE 603 Law and Health Care Ethics (3 credits) 
This course explores the crucial connection between health law and health care ethics. The course focuses on major ethical themes that have emerged in the law and highlights specific interconnections of doctrines that have come out of landmark cases. The course will also examine the significant and fundamental differences between health care ethics and health law.

MHE 604 Social & Cultural Contexts of Health Care (3 credits) 
This class introduces the student to the various contexts of personal and social experience that construct and interpret bioethics. Participants consider identity and autonomy as embedded in social matrices ranging from the body itself to global configurations. Various power dynamics of class, legitimacy, and ideology are considered. Participants analyze the culture of the biomedical project and the challenge of finding one's voice within it.

MHE 605 Philosophical Bioethics (3 credits) 
This course reviews the nature of ethical reasoning, including various epistemological challenges to moral judgment. Second, major theories of ethics will be introduced, including virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, casuistry and principlism. Third, signature texts by protagonists of these historical theories will be compared and contrasted with contemporary critics, with specific reference to issues of vulnerability. P: MHE 601 or MHE 602.

MHE 606 Theories of Justice (3 credits) 
This course builds on Philosophical Bioethics (MHE 605) and Health Policy (MHE 601) by advancing students' knowledge of ethical reasoning and by familiarizing students with theories of justice, in particular. This course will introduce students to theoretical and practical complexities, ambiguities, and persistent questions at the intersections of clinical ethics, social policy, and health justice. P: MHE 601 and MHE 605.

MHE 607 Practical Ethics in Health Care Settings (3 credits)
The practical application of ethics to clinical situations is much more than following standards of practice. This course will provide the opportunity to apply foundational concepts of ethics to a variety of health care settings. Additionally, the use of deliberative methods to think through and discuss the unique features presented by different health care settings and professional conduct will be an integral component of the course. The typical charges of institutional ethics committees will be examined: consultation, education, and policy review/development. P: MHE 605.

MHE 608 Practicum
This course requires synthesis of content from all previous foundational course work. Students will analyze vulnerability and corresponding ethical issues as they pertain to a particular group, population, policy, or structure. Students will develop a practical plan for responding to the ethical issue or problem that has been identified in a collaborative and constructive manner with key individuals at the practicum site. Using a portfolio approach, students will integrate appropriate course content and other relevant support material into the plan. P: MHE 601, MHE 602, MHE 603, MHE 604, MHE 605, MHE 606, MHE 607.

MHE 609 Capstone Project (3 credits)
In this final required course of the degree program, students are expected to integrate insights gained and competencies acquired. Applying scholarly methods of bioethical inquiry and composition, students will develop a scholarly product on a theme related to their Practicum course experience. P: MHE 601, MHE 602, MHE 603, MHE 604, MHE 605, MHE 606, MHE 607, and MHE 608.

Electives (Choose one of the following)

MHE 611 Advanced Bioethical Theory (3 credits)
Whereas MHE 605 focuses on the major ethical theories as they have been developed since Greek antiquity and that nowadays still inform bioethical thinking, this course focuses on modern variations on these historical theories and newly developed theories that have specific relevance for the field of health care ethics. The course is particularly useful for students planning to continue their education with doctoral studies and/or students who are planning to engage in bioethical research and scholarship. P: MHE 605.

MHE 612 Philosophical and Theological Perspectives on End-of-Life Care (3 credits)
The possibilities of modern medicine to extend people's lives are considerable and are generally much appreciated. But these advances have also evoked ever more ethical quandaries. Patients have begun to decline the available life-extending interventions or even request euthanasia. Medicine - and society more in general - appear unable to balance life extension gained with quality of life considerations. On top of that, the economic expenses are quickly becoming prohibitive. The biomedical sciences, philosophy, and theology struggle to address these new challenges theoretically, for extending life has been one of the most important goals of western medicine for many centuries, rarely questioned and fully supported by most major faith traditions. This course will (1) challenge participants to reflect on and examine their own views on disabilities, aging and dying; (2) review historically, culturally and religiously significant patterns for societies' understanding of aging and death, and medical treatments at the end of life; (3) offer analytical tools to critically examine the paradox of harmful life-extension; (4) examine the merits of legislation and policy development in the area of end of life health care; and (5) provide students with an opportunity to study and debate hallmark ethics cases in end-of-life care. P: MHE 603, MHE 605.

MHE 613 Professional Ethics and the Vocation of Health Care (3 credits)
This course will examine what health care professionalism is or should be in light of health and health care inequalities, multiculturalism, humanistic concerns, and practical considerations. Topics will include: (1) The historical development and social configuration of health care professions and structures; (2) Proposed moral foundations such as calling, social contract, moral principles, and an ethics of care; (3) The legal status of professions; (4) The scope of professional obligations, including direct health care, public health, advocacy, elimination of health inequalities, code development, standardization, peer review, whistle-blowing, and protection of public trust; and (5) Intersectoral and interprofessional collaboration. Students will be invited to critically assess whether professional tenets and structures promote or undermine health and health care equality, humanistic care, fair treatment, openness to diversity, power equalities, and systemic analyses.

MHE 617 Mental Health and Medical Humanities (3 credits)
Recent policy trends in mental health, health inequalities, and intersections of health policy and social policy are focal points of study in this elective. A handful of scholarly articles complement our main study of these issues through literature and film. P: MHE 601, MHE 604, MHE 606.

MHE 618 Teaching and Learning Strategies in Ethics (3 credits)
What sorts of knowledge do teachers of ethics need whether the instruction occurs in a classroom, online, or in a professional seminar? This course will examine the knowledge that Shulman asserts teachers need including: 1) content knowledge; 2) general pedagogical knowledge with special reference to broad principles and strategies of management and organization that transcend subject matter; 3) pedagogical content knowledge, that special form of understanding of best practices in teaching ethics; and 4) knowledge of learners and their characteristics. The course will emphasize teaching and learning methods that are most effective for ethics content. P: MHE 605.

MHE 619 Rescue and Transplantation: Manifestations of Scarcity and Power in US Health Care (3 credits)
This elective course combines the perspectives of bioethics and anthropology. It focuses on the impact on society of a rescue-oriented health care system and the promotion of transplantation as a quintessential form of rescue. Through reading, discussion, and reflection students explore the concepts of rescue, scarcity, and the search for control in terms of acute care and mortality in the US. Students also choose one of several international perspectives on organ transplantation, compare it to a US perspective, and present their findings to the class. The course begins by considering how CPR and the obligation to rescue reflects and shapes both US health care and the social construction of dying and death in the American hospital. The course relates rescue to scarcity and power, including power over nature. The course considers micro and macro perspectives as it explores the organ transfer project, its promises, and its ability to deliver on those promises. Finally, students consider an alternative set of ideas to contrast to rescue’s positivist frame.

MHE 620 Bioethics as Practice (3 credits)
Prominent debates and discussions about defining bioethics and its projects are focal points of study in this selective. We will consider the merits and drawbacks of critical approaches and methods of intersectoral work in bioethics and explore different thinkers' responses to questions about the nature, scope, and authority of the field.

MHE 621 Narrative Bioethics (3 credits)
This course canvasses several different meanings of the term "narrative'" in the context of bioethics and health policy and seeks to advance students' knowledge of the processes and frameworks of ethical reasoning that transpire in different genres of storytelling, such as the medical record, case summaries, poetry, novels, and visual arts. This course will introduce students to theoretical and practical complexities, ambiguities, and persistent questions about what it means to understand persons through stories. This course will also consider how emotions inform reasoning, how stories guide moral perception, and how study of humanities informs our understandings and critiques of the enterprise of health care and its projects.

MHE 622 Public Health Ethics (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to ethical issues in population health and the discipline of public health. This course draws upon some of the major discourses and analyses in human rights, social justice and other ethical theory, and health policy to consider health and healthcare as aggregate public and social goods. The ethical dimensions of geopolitical, economic, cultural, environmental, educational, and social influences on health will be explored in global, national, and community contexts. The course will consider ethical questions about the discipline of public health and the roles of governments, academic medical centers, healthcare organizations, health professions, professionals, and members of the public as stewards of health.

MHE 623 Catholic Bioethics (3 credits)
Intensive introduction to the Catholic tradition in bioethics—including theological and philosophical foundations, key teachings of the church's Magisterium, and points of current controversy. Special focus on Catholic understandings of human dignity and justice, in general and as applied to selected health care issues.

MHE 624 Oral Health Care at the Intersection of Professional and Business Ethics (3 credits)
This course reviews the ethical challenges faced by health care providers who are both private entrepreneurs and members of a profession. Business and professional aims are not identical and may even be mutually exclusive. The course focuses on ethical issues in the practice of dentistry and oral health care, but many other health providers face similar conflicts, such as pharmacists, optometrists, physical/occupational therapists, and plastic surgeons. Specific attention will be paid to the historical development of the dental profession, underserved populations, esthetic treatments, advertising, error management, and peer review.

Find out more about the curriculum of the online master's degree in Health Care Ethics: Request More Information or call us toll-free today at 866.717.6365 to speak to an Admissions Representative.