BIOETHICS

Degree course: 
Corso di Long single cycle degree (6 years) in MEDICINE AND SURGERY
Academic year when starting the degree: 
2020/2021
Year: 
1
Academic year in which the course will be held: 
2020/2021
Course type: 
Compulsory subjects, characteristic of the class
Seat of the course: 
Varese - Università degli Studi dell'Insubria
Credits: 
2
Period: 
First Semester
Standard lectures hours: 
20
Detail of lecture’s hours: 
Lesson (16 hours), Seminar (4 hours)
Requirements: 

A good general knowledge, culture and education acquired by media, essays/studies and literary texts.

To act consistently with the above-mentioned aims and methodology, a written multiple choice test (20 questions about the whole course-contents, ten regarding ethics and ten about history of medicine; two minutes for answering each question) is eventually submitted. Both the discipline-tests have to be passed, otherwise the whole examination must be repeated. The final individual judgment is expressed in the form: qualified /unqualified. This evaluation comes from the qualitatively pondered average results (discussed by the teaching team). The test shows the reached level of theoretical knowledge and understanding, of history/ethics-applying skills and of other competences in medical humanities like the communicating and debating ability inside a pluralistic arena.
For what concerns the other hoped educational results, the teachers will take in account the performances shown by the students in the classroom-debates, and they will express and comment together a specific evaluation credit, in order to confirm or correct the multiple choice tests marks .

Assessment: 
Giudizio Finale

Educational aims and hoped-for results in medical humanities (in particular: ethics and history of medicine) are the coherent, necessary introduction and completion of an University degree in Medicine. The main goal is training the students for a sound and coherent ethical and historical reasoning in biomedical contexts of research, practice and work. Skills to be pursued and implemented are the following ones: perceiving a moral dilemma; justifying personal evaluations in the light of rules, principles and theories; composing a quarrel and disagreement inside the staff and into our social pluralistic arena; recognizing the historical and cultural dimensions of scientific and technological institutions and practices; learning a language suitable for understanding, interpreting and commenting (in dialogue) upon the narrative events of an individual illness and of the institutional working life. At the end of the course, the student is expected to manage ethical, humanistic and historical cognitive skills, to express and defend an autonomous moral judgment, to apply the theoretical understanding to specific, concrete biomedical dilemmas, to communicate, dialogue and debate value-laded issues in an interdisciplinary and pluralistic setting, to learn an attitude of ethical problem-solving, to respect the human rights of sick persons, both in clinical practice and in the drug experimentation trials.

Definition of bioethics (history, aims, methods, tools), clinical practice, biological science and research, medical humanities, applied ethics, history of medicine and of technologies. Truth telling. Privacy and confidentiality (bio-banks). Euthanasia and over-treatment. Drug experimentation, codes of ethics and ethics committees. Informed consent. Abortion and status of embryo. Assisted procreation. Cloning and stem cells. Justice and resources allocation. Organ transplantation. Definition of death and brain death. Islamic and Jewish patients. Communication inside the staff. Ethics, literature and cinema. Vaccines and public health issues. Burn out in clinical personnel: ethics and psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Genetic testing and screening. Medicine, nursing and ethics at the chair-side. Ethics consultation. Animal rights. Introductory elements of history/philosophy-of-medicine.
Professional virtues and health-care/educational skills. Cases of conflict between moral principles and new Italian and European laws about the aims, role and limits of the professionals involved in the biomedical field (doctors, technicians, researchers, educators, social workers). A special regard is offered to palliative care, in a bio-psycho-social and person-centered perspective, in order to protect human rights, to defend an independent scientific information, to avoid conflicts of interest and to respect gender-identities, conditions of poverty, ethnic origins. About 20 hours of direct interpersonal teaching (5 for beginning of life, 5 for end-of-life issues, 10 for the other issues) are required as a general basic introduction.

For history of medicine / human sciences: Definition of medicine. Instinctive medicine and regular medicine. Hippocrates/the Oath/Theory of Humours. Galen/the physiological anatomy system. About 10 hours of direct interpersonal teaching are required as a general basic introduction. Vis a vis lessons/lectures are going to deal with some of these topics and to show the proper learning methodology to widen the issues. Individual ways of further studying and investigating in ethics and history are to be taught and tested in the classroom.

Paolo Cattorini, Bioetica. Metodo ed elementi di base per affrontare problemi clinici, Ed. Elsevier, Milano, 4 ed. , 2011; Paolo Cattorini, Bioetica e cinema, Ed. FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2° ed. 2006; T.L. Beauchamp – J.F. Childress, Princìpi di etica biomedica, Firenze, Le Lettere, 1999 (Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Oxford Univ. Press); S. Shapshay, Ed., Bioethics at the Movies, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2009; G. Boniolo - P. Maugeri, Eds., Etica alle frontiere della biomedicina, Milano, Mondadori, 2014; D. Neri, La bioetica in laboratorio, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2005.

For History of Medicine:
Zanobio-Armocida, Storia della medicina, Milano, Masson, ultima ediz.
L. BELLONI, Per la storia della medicina, Arnaldo Forni Editore, Bologna 1990.
G. ARMOCIDA, Storia della medicina dal XVII al XX secolo, Jaca Book, Milano 1993.
R. PORTER, Breve ma veridica storia della medicina occidentale, Carocci ed., Roma 2011

By following the introductory exposition by the professor (in order to achieve the above-mentioned educational aims), and by dealing with concrete situational problems, cognitive knowledge, emotional discernment, communicating competence and history/ethics-applying skills are fostered and trained. Theories, principles, ways of reasoning, logical rules, linguistic ambiguities, styles of behavior, historical events and moral questions are presented, commented and analyzed in a pluralistic manner. Relevant key words and issues will be debated and interdisciplinary professional dilemmas will be criticized and evaluated. Narrative texts, especially motion pictures, will involve the group in the emotional heart of complex cases, in order to outline the social and historical imaginary, to help the expression of individual/class insights and feelings, to prepare a mature staff decision.

Email Address: paolo.cattorini@uninsubria.it and ilaria.gorini@uninsubria.it
Reception Hours: for more information and individual consultation in “Padiglione Antonini”, via Rossi 9, Varese, the student is invited to preliminarily contact the teachers at their email address.

Professors

CATTORINI PAOLO MARINO