This module provides an introduction to English health care law. Students will examine the 'general part' of health care law, ie, the rules that govern consents, refusals, and requests for medical treatment for individuals at various life stages, as well as the legal regime for the allocation of scarce medical resources. Students will apply their knowledge of the general part, and engage with topics in the 'special part' of health care law through problem-based learning, eg the legal regimes that govern abortion, assisted death, reproductive technologies and organ transplantation. Students will also have to opportunity to engage with key contributions to the bioethics literature in small groups.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
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A | Semester 2 2023-24 |
The module aims, as part of the overall LLB programme, to enable students to develop new and further critical perspectives on law, whilst progressively developing core academic and legal skills.
This module aims to provide students with an introduction to English healthcare law, and in so doing, develop descriptive and evaluative skills in respect of primary and secondary legal materials.
Students will examine the 'general part' of healthcare law, ie, the rules that govern consents, refusals, and requests for medical treatment for individuals at various life stages (adults and children). Students will apply their knowledge of the general part, and engage with topics in the 'special part' of healthcare law through problem-based learning, eg the legal regimes that govern abortion, assisted death, and organ transplantation. Students will also have to opportunity to engage with seminal contributions to the bioethics literature in small groups on topics such as abortion, organ transplantation, reproductive matters i.e. technologies, surrogacy, obstetric violence.
By the end of the module students will demonstrate the ability to:
Term 1 of the course takes place by way of lectures and discussion seminars. It engages in study of the 'general part' of health care law. We will cover:
Term 2 of the course has a problem-based learning model, complemented by an ethics reading group. Students will apply their knowledge of the general part of healthcare law in the study of four realistic factual scenarios, which also engage topics in the 'special part', ie discrete legal regimes, of health care law. PBL scenarios may cover topics including:
The ethics reading groups run in alternate weeks to PBL. Students will engage with seminal contributions to the bioethics literature on topics relating to the content of the current PBL.
Task | % of module mark |
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Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Assessment of the module takes place by way of a problem question and law reform essay. Students will examine a factual scenario that raises legal issues relating to the general part and at least one topic in the special part of health care law, and engage in a two-part assessement.
The suggested distribution of words between parts I and II is 1,800 and 1,200 respectively. However, this is not a prescription.
The course seeks to develop students' abilities to manipulate to legal problems (and thereby succeed at part I of the summative assessment) through embedded activities, eg short vignettes on weekly learning for discussion during seminars, and reapplication of the learning outcomes to the fact patterns of the scenarios during the problem-based learning phase.
To aid students with Part II of the assessment, there will be an opportunity to write a formative law reform essay in one area of healthcare law, for which students will receive written feedback from their tutor.
Task | % of module mark |
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Essay/coursework | 100 |
The module contains a number of opportunities for formative feedback on the development of knowledge and skills:
Summative feedback consists in generic and individualised written feedback on coursework.