About the research topic
How should we assess and justify moral actions in the health service? Such assessments and justifications are based on, among other things, perspectives, theories, and positions in ethics. While ethics on the one hand can help to analyze and justify specific decisions and choices of action in the clinic, the health service's daily challenges can on the other challenge and help us revise ethical theories and perspectives.
Similarly, ethical challenges relate to basic concepts in medicine and health sciences, such as health, disease, futility, risk, uncertainty, autonomy, competence, compulsion, trust, and care. Clarification of such concepts and their ethical implications are of fundamental importance for health practice.
Furthermore, the philosophy of medicine also discusses a number of issues concerning the production of health knowledge and evidence. How should produce and assess knowledge? How to understand causality? What forms of rationality do the health sciences use? What biases are hidden in medicine?
Specific topics
Normative ethics
- Moral theory in medical ethics
- Moral case deliberation, Casuistry
- Utilitarian ethics
- Deontology
- Virtue ethics, proximity, impartiality, and relationships in moral theory
- Global health and sustainability
- Ethics at the beginning and end of life
- Natural law thinking
- (bio)Technology ethics: Handling disruptive biotechnology.
- Respect for Life (Albert Schweitzer and Medical Ethics)
- Ancient philosophy and modern medicine
- Subject didactics of medicine with special focus on the use of film and literature in teaching
Basic concepts in the health service
- Health
- Illness
- Utility, futile
- Diagnostics
- Uncertainty
- Care
- Vulnerability
- Trust
- Causality
- Compulsion
- Autonomy, consent, competency
- Biological material – between thing and person
Meta-ethics
- Moral realism in clinical practice