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Revision 1 closed, replaced by current version.
Delivery mode: Individualized study or grouped study.
Credits: 3 - Applied Studies
Prerequisite: HADM 369, PHIL 333, PHIL 335, HSRV 311, any 300 level Nursing course or professor approval is required.
Centre: Centre for State and Legal Studies
HADM 400 has a Challenge for Credit option.
Course website
Health Care Law is a rapidly growing field of study, research, and education. Health care and human service professionals are seeing it as increasingly relevant to clinical practice and to policy-making. Distinctive characteristics of Canadian health law and health policy are frequently misunderstood or confused with the American context.
The building blocks of legal analysis are essential to getting the most from this course. This means identifying legal issues, understanding what sources and statements of law matter most, knowing how to access those sources, and knowing how to apply legal principles to factual cases. In this course, we will move, unit by unit, through this learning process, beginning with sources of law, moving to issue identification, then to legal analysis, and then to the application of law to facts. Two short written assignments will focus more on the learning of process than on legal knowledge.
Unit 1: Introduction to Health Law
Unit 2: Health Law and the Canadian Health Care System
Unit 3: Health Law and Health Professional Regulation
Unit 4: Clinical Practice and Legal Liability
Unit 5: General Principles of the Law of Consent
Unit 6: Specific Problems of the Law of Consent
Unit 7: Health Information Law
Unit 8: Reproductive Decision-Making
Unit 9: Life's End Decision-Making
Unit 10: Health Law and Genetics
To receive credit for HADM 400, you must achieve a minimum composite course grade of “D” (50 percent) and a mark of 50 percent or more on each assignment, as well as the final examination. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:
| Assignment 1 | Assignment 2 | Final Exam | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25% | 25% | 50% | 100% |
To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.
Downie, Jocelyn, Timothy Caulfield, and Colleen Flood, eds. Canadian Health Law and Policy. 2nd ed. Markham, ON: Butterworths Canada, 2002.
Yogis, John A. Canadian Law Dictionary. 5th ed. Hauppauge, NY: Barron's, 2003.
The course materials also include a study guide, student manual.