Research and Advanced Education
About Masters Course in Bioethics
Bárbara Pinho Costa
For me the Masters Course in Bioethics was my first contact with the University of Lisbon.
Despite it being a new environment, I felt very welcomed by colleagues and teachers.
I think that the wide area covered by the subjects, the quality of the transmitting of knowledge, the dynamic nature of the classes and the concern for the more human dimension were decisive in reinforcing the interest and motivation on the part of all the masters students.
The fact that we come from different professional areas is also an advantage, allowing the exchanging of experiences and different views on the same issues.
I am convinced that this course will be fundamental in my professional and personal development.
Masters Course in Bioethics
António Barbosa (Director of the Bioethics Centre, Coordinator of the Bioethics Masters Council), ext. 44192 cbioetica@fm.ul.pt
At a time of deep changes in patterns of morbility, of a runaway advance in techno-sciences and in the celebration of alterity, remarkable successes have been achieved in the field of health, but there have also been added vulnerabilities in a complex and uncertain world.
The two thousand year-old beneficent ethics of health professionals has been confronted over the last decades by the assumption of patients’ autonomy, prolonging citizens’ civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, which have become a part of the daily life of the last two centuries. This ethos has also been shaken up over the last thirty years by the increasing involvement of techno-sciences in the field of health that have been factors of maintaining health budgets, giving rise to state measures of regulation and derivation, directly or indirectly mobilising, through (public or private) insurance systems, the often ambivalent and unprepared commitment and complicity of health professionals.
Health professionals are suddenly faced with a dual role as unconditional defenders of patients and at the same time state rationalizing arms in the micro-allocation of resources. Faced with the risk of the suffocation of their ethos, which is now subject to other factors of attraction (which it is important to get to know reflexively), it is becoming necessary to hydrate, refresh inside, reconvert and restore in space and time that ethos undergoing a process of increasing complexification that has to be ethically revived.
It is necessary to develop ethical skills and identities to promote an implied knowledge, a contextualised deontology and action reflected in all fields of life, but also in the polarity of the spaces of professional life.
It has become indispensable to train sensitive, free, capable and responsible health professionals through the acquisition of the skills of free dialogue, cooperative negotiation, informed reflection, applied foundation, reasonable decision and responsible actions.
These were the desiderata accepted with the creation of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon Masters Course in Bioethics, which had the innovation of introducing a base perspective and a proactive teaching methodology for the training of health professionals and those of other like professions (graduates in Law, Biology, Psychology, …), seeking to involve the whole of the faculty’s teaching staff as well as those of other reputed Portuguese and international institutions.
The Masters in Bioethics aims at:
1. Dominating a corpus of knowledge and of the historical context of crossing several philosophical, ideological, political, religious and juridical bases;
2. Creating a commitment to social justice and respect for human rights, not being a hostage to them;
3. Developing an attitude of listening in relation to the other in difficulty or in a situation of vulnerability;
4. Favouring the creation of a network of actors who might make the philosophy of care evolve and developing that network, encouraging collaboration, sharing and debate among people;
5. Preparing for an independent functioning on ethics committees fro research and for clinical ethics;
6. Preparing for bioethical research.
And develops the following specific aims:
1. Awareness towards the normative dimension in clinical decisions, with a view to preparation for identifying its technical and ethical aspects and identifying their relationship;
2. Promoting capacities to analyse the normative dimensions of clinical decision, identifying the moral principles and rules, and critically analysing moral arguments;
3. Developing capacities to explore and justify personal decisions in relation to ethical problems in the way they appear in specific clinical contexts;
4. Empowering capacities to choose, analyse and critically apply, on the level of teams, departments, services and institutions, all pertinent information in the various fields of bioethics, providing a multi-perspective view of the decision-making process in the health services;
5. Making it possible to act as an expert (institutional ethics committees, consultant in clinical bioethics...) in solving ethical problems in clinical, hospital and community practice;
6. Exercising dominance of the methodology that allows one to set out and carry out bioethical research in health services.
The Masters Course has been complemented with symposia that the Bioethics Centre has carried on a regular basis, at least annually:
• 1999 – Ethics Committee and its Aims
• 2000 – Bioethical Implications in HIV–AIDS Infection
• 2000 – Bioethics and Globalisation
• 2000 – Human Rights and Bioethics
• 2000 – Children’s Rights Convention
• 2000 – Spiritual and Human Dimension in Bioethics
• 2001 – Deliberation in Bioethics
• 2001 – Bioethics and Migrations
• 2001 – Ethics of the Future
• 2002 – Bioethics and Transformations in Society
• 2003 – Bioethics and Vulnerability
• 2004 – Bioethics and Identities
• 2005 – Bioethics and Religions
• 2006 – Bioethics and Psychiatry
• 2007 – Bioethics and Genetics: “Not sick yet”
• 2008 – Bioethics: Fundamental Concepts
• 2009 – Ethical Decisions at the End of Life
Besides the symposia, the centre has also organised short training courses (6 editions), for members of ethics committees for health, whenever relevant innovations appear in their field of interest.
The Bioethics Centre has also been responsible for the organisation, in Lisbon, of the Annual Conference of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics, in 2003, and will organize the Luso-Brazilian Bioethics Congress in 2012, thus contributing towards the consolidation of an old collaboration.
These events reinforce one of the aims of the Masters course and the centre in that they favour a network of professionals who may develop an ethical perspective in the providing of care. Indeed, about 25 masters students are members of ethics committees in health or similar institutions, and other groups have created reflection groups and bioethics nucleuses that we have stimulated and accompanied.
The Centre has regularly divulged bioethics issues through publications, some of which are the responsibility of former Masters students.
From the point of view of research in bioethics, 54 masters dissertations have now been completed over the following major areas: Intensive Medicine (6); Transplant Medicine (1); Transfusion Medicine (1); Paediatrics (7); Obstetrics (3); Ophthalmology (1); Neurology (1); Otorhinolaryngology (1); Psychiatry (2); Palliative Care (8); Gerontology (3); Organisational Ethics (5); Ethics Committees (2); Animal Experimenting (1); Pedagogy (1); Complementary Medicines (1); Occupational Health (1); Dental Medicine (1); “Conceptuals” (8).
This work would not have been possible without the committed collaboration of other colleagues on the Council and the Masters (Professors Fernando Martins Vale and Paulo Costa), of the Secretariat of the Bioethics Centre, of the Masters Office and the Directive Councils of the Faculty.
For me the Masters Course in Bioethics was my first contact with the University of Lisbon.
Despite it being a new environment, I felt very welcomed by colleagues and teachers.
I think that the wide area covered by the subjects, the quality of the transmitting of knowledge, the dynamic nature of the classes and the concern for the more human dimension were decisive in reinforcing the interest and motivation on the part of all the masters students.
The fact that we come from different professional areas is also an advantage, allowing the exchanging of experiences and different views on the same issues.
I am convinced that this course will be fundamental in my professional and personal development.
Masters Course in Bioethics
António Barbosa (Director of the Bioethics Centre, Coordinator of the Bioethics Masters Council), ext. 44192 cbioetica@fm.ul.pt
At a time of deep changes in patterns of morbility, of a runaway advance in techno-sciences and in the celebration of alterity, remarkable successes have been achieved in the field of health, but there have also been added vulnerabilities in a complex and uncertain world.
The two thousand year-old beneficent ethics of health professionals has been confronted over the last decades by the assumption of patients’ autonomy, prolonging citizens’ civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, which have become a part of the daily life of the last two centuries. This ethos has also been shaken up over the last thirty years by the increasing involvement of techno-sciences in the field of health that have been factors of maintaining health budgets, giving rise to state measures of regulation and derivation, directly or indirectly mobilising, through (public or private) insurance systems, the often ambivalent and unprepared commitment and complicity of health professionals.
Health professionals are suddenly faced with a dual role as unconditional defenders of patients and at the same time state rationalizing arms in the micro-allocation of resources. Faced with the risk of the suffocation of their ethos, which is now subject to other factors of attraction (which it is important to get to know reflexively), it is becoming necessary to hydrate, refresh inside, reconvert and restore in space and time that ethos undergoing a process of increasing complexification that has to be ethically revived.
It is necessary to develop ethical skills and identities to promote an implied knowledge, a contextualised deontology and action reflected in all fields of life, but also in the polarity of the spaces of professional life.
It has become indispensable to train sensitive, free, capable and responsible health professionals through the acquisition of the skills of free dialogue, cooperative negotiation, informed reflection, applied foundation, reasonable decision and responsible actions.
These were the desiderata accepted with the creation of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon Masters Course in Bioethics, which had the innovation of introducing a base perspective and a proactive teaching methodology for the training of health professionals and those of other like professions (graduates in Law, Biology, Psychology, …), seeking to involve the whole of the faculty’s teaching staff as well as those of other reputed Portuguese and international institutions.
The Masters in Bioethics aims at:
1. Dominating a corpus of knowledge and of the historical context of crossing several philosophical, ideological, political, religious and juridical bases;
2. Creating a commitment to social justice and respect for human rights, not being a hostage to them;
3. Developing an attitude of listening in relation to the other in difficulty or in a situation of vulnerability;
4. Favouring the creation of a network of actors who might make the philosophy of care evolve and developing that network, encouraging collaboration, sharing and debate among people;
5. Preparing for an independent functioning on ethics committees fro research and for clinical ethics;
6. Preparing for bioethical research.
And develops the following specific aims:
1. Awareness towards the normative dimension in clinical decisions, with a view to preparation for identifying its technical and ethical aspects and identifying their relationship;
2. Promoting capacities to analyse the normative dimensions of clinical decision, identifying the moral principles and rules, and critically analysing moral arguments;
3. Developing capacities to explore and justify personal decisions in relation to ethical problems in the way they appear in specific clinical contexts;
4. Empowering capacities to choose, analyse and critically apply, on the level of teams, departments, services and institutions, all pertinent information in the various fields of bioethics, providing a multi-perspective view of the decision-making process in the health services;
5. Making it possible to act as an expert (institutional ethics committees, consultant in clinical bioethics...) in solving ethical problems in clinical, hospital and community practice;
6. Exercising dominance of the methodology that allows one to set out and carry out bioethical research in health services.
The Masters Course has been complemented with symposia that the Bioethics Centre has carried on a regular basis, at least annually:
• 1999 – Ethics Committee and its Aims
• 2000 – Bioethical Implications in HIV–AIDS Infection
• 2000 – Bioethics and Globalisation
• 2000 – Human Rights and Bioethics
• 2000 – Children’s Rights Convention
• 2000 – Spiritual and Human Dimension in Bioethics
• 2001 – Deliberation in Bioethics
• 2001 – Bioethics and Migrations
• 2001 – Ethics of the Future
• 2002 – Bioethics and Transformations in Society
• 2003 – Bioethics and Vulnerability
• 2004 – Bioethics and Identities
• 2005 – Bioethics and Religions
• 2006 – Bioethics and Psychiatry
• 2007 – Bioethics and Genetics: “Not sick yet”
• 2008 – Bioethics: Fundamental Concepts
• 2009 – Ethical Decisions at the End of Life
Besides the symposia, the centre has also organised short training courses (6 editions), for members of ethics committees for health, whenever relevant innovations appear in their field of interest.
The Bioethics Centre has also been responsible for the organisation, in Lisbon, of the Annual Conference of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics, in 2003, and will organize the Luso-Brazilian Bioethics Congress in 2012, thus contributing towards the consolidation of an old collaboration.
These events reinforce one of the aims of the Masters course and the centre in that they favour a network of professionals who may develop an ethical perspective in the providing of care. Indeed, about 25 masters students are members of ethics committees in health or similar institutions, and other groups have created reflection groups and bioethics nucleuses that we have stimulated and accompanied.
The Centre has regularly divulged bioethics issues through publications, some of which are the responsibility of former Masters students.
From the point of view of research in bioethics, 54 masters dissertations have now been completed over the following major areas: Intensive Medicine (6); Transplant Medicine (1); Transfusion Medicine (1); Paediatrics (7); Obstetrics (3); Ophthalmology (1); Neurology (1); Otorhinolaryngology (1); Psychiatry (2); Palliative Care (8); Gerontology (3); Organisational Ethics (5); Ethics Committees (2); Animal Experimenting (1); Pedagogy (1); Complementary Medicines (1); Occupational Health (1); Dental Medicine (1); “Conceptuals” (8).
This work would not have been possible without the committed collaboration of other colleagues on the Council and the Masters (Professors Fernando Martins Vale and Paulo Costa), of the Secretariat of the Bioethics Centre, of the Masters Office and the Directive Councils of the Faculty.
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