730-386 Health and Medical Law

Legal Method and Reasoning; Principles of Public Law; Torts; Legal Theory or in each case their equivalents.

This subject considers the legal relationship between patients and health care providers. It explains the duty of health care providers to exercise reasonable care in diagnosis, information giving and treatment; and to involve patients in decision making and the extent of a health professional's obligation to respect patients' privacy, to keep information confidential and to allow patients access to their records. The law on surrogate decision making for patients who may not be able to make their own decisions will be discussed; these patients include children, adolescents, intellectually disabled and mentally ill patients and the terminally ill and dying. The law on abortion, child destruction, wrongful birth and wrongful life is examined.

Final examination three hours 100%.

• L Skene, Law and Medical Practice: Rights, Duties, Claims & Defences. 3rd edn, Lexis-Nexis, 2007.