BTHX 5620/BTHX 8620 | Social Context of Health and Illness
Sept. 2 - Dec. 10
Upon completion of the course students should be able to:
- Describe the ways in which understandings of the body differ between providers and patients.
- Describe the assumptions underlying Western medicine.
- Describe bioethical issues that arise from the social context of health and illness.
About the Instructor:
Ian D. Wolfe, PhD, MA, RN, HEC-C, is Director of Ethics, Clinical Ethics Department, Children's Minnesota; Community Instructor Faculty, Department of Pediatrics, U of MN Medical School; Affiliate Faculty Member, Center for Bioethics, U of MN; Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Pediatric Ethics. He earned his PhD in Nursing with a focus in bioethics, and his MA in Bioethics with a minor in Public Health and focus on health equity, from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Wolfe has a clinical background in burn, trauma and pediatric critical care nursing. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship in pediatric bioethics at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Dr. Wolfe has authored a broad range of journal articles that support his main interest which is how social, political and cultural systems issues affect clinical ethics and care at the bedside.
Dr. Wolfe is the current vice chair of the ethics advisory board for the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights. He has chaired and participated in other volunteer activities with state and national nursing and medical organizations such as the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, and Society for Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Wolfe’s current areas of research focus on preventative and integrated ethics, parent-clinician interactions and decision-making, fetal health ethics, and the relationship of hospitals to the community.