Ethical Decision-Making in Care (FutureLearn)

Raise your awareness of everyday ethical issues in care and learn techniques to make ethical decisions. Learn how to use ethical frameworks to make decisions in care. On this course, you’ll explore ethical issues that arise in daily care, and learn the best practices for reflecting on and making moral decisions.

Enroll in course

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You’ll consider different ethical frameworks, including human rights, virtue ethics and the ‘Four Principles’ of medical ethics: nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice, and respect for autonomy.

You’ll compare methods of analysing a caregiving scenario, and identify the moral and ethical problems of a care situation. You’ll also learn how to apply a deliberative framework, where deliberation on a decision from multiple points of view is essential.

What topics will you cover?

Different ethical frameworks:

- Four Principles of Biomedical Ethics

- Human Rights

- Virtue Ethics

- ETHICS Deliberative Framework

Learning on this course

You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

- Explain the meaning of 'ethics' in relation to care.

- Explain how ethics differs from related concepts.

- Explain The Four Principles Approach to care ethics.

- Apply the Four Principles to a midwifery scenario.

- Identify why ethics in care now receives a lot of media attention.

- Describe human rights frameworks that impact on care-giving.

- Evaluate the role of human rights in care.

- Apply insights in human rights to decision-making regarding disagreements in care.

- Describe the key elements of Virtue Ethics.

- Identify moral problems that arise in care.

- Debate the usefulness of Virtue Ethics in relating to care-recipient choices.

- Apply Virtue Ethics to public health decision-making.

- Identify ethical aspects of an elder care scenario.

- Compare and contrast three different ways of analysing an elder care scenario.

- Apply a Deliberative Framework to care-giving scenarios.

- Discuss the role of ethical decision-making in care during a pandemic.

- Reflect on your learning from this course.
Who is the course for?

This course is primarily designed for caregivers, care assistants and nurses.

However, the course will also be of interest to anyone engaged in health and social care, or who uses health and social care services.