LLM Healthcare Ethics and Law

The unit aims to provide students with a course unit that makes the LLM, MA bioethics programmes clearly satisfy the QAA’s Personal Development Plans (PDP) requirement. It also aims to foster a cohesive, research-oriented intellectual environment amongst our post-graduate taught students.

• Identify and address students’ research training needs.
• Introduce students to a range of methods in bioethics, law, legal-studies, and socio-legal studies.
• Enable students to lead, sustain, and participate in critical methodological discussions.
• Equip students with the knowledge and skills to plan a coherent and achievable research design and to write a research proposal (for their master’s dissertation, and/or a PhD proposal).
• Support students to evaluate and manage their own personal development and training.
• Equip students with the knowledge and skills to plan their master’s and/or PhD dissertation/thesis.
• Familiarise students with research governance and approval requirements.
• Prepare students for making robust PhD proposals to funders and other bodies – if applicable.

More generally, the unit aims to provide students with a course unit that makes the LLM, MA bioethics programmes clearly satisfy the QAA’s PDP requirement. It also aims to foster a cohesive, research-oriented intellectual environment amongst our post-graduate taught students.

The module will combine face to face lectures and seminars with student led presentations. We will also set the student short activities, such as coding a section of an interview transcript, analysing survey data and critically examining key texts.

We will make use of Blackboard to host the learning materials, handouts, resource links, videos and other visual materials.

Students will be encouraged to engage with these by setting pre-session reading, tasks and discussion board activities.

We will also hold designated office hours for the students to drop into discuss their research proposals and personal development plans. We will also hold focussed methodology clinics on particular methodologies, i.e. qualitative interviewing for those thinking of using those methods.

Brief overview of an indicative syllabus/topics.

Week 1 – introduction to the course.

Outline of different approaches to research. Overview of skills required for dissertation and article writing. Introduction to personal development plans (PDP) and how to do a skills audit.

Week 2 – methods in bioethics

This session will provide an overview for approaches and methods used in contemporary bioethics research. Such as: philosophical analysis, normative argumentation, reviews of reasons and empirical ethics.

Week 3 – methods in legal research.

This session will provide an overview of methods that are used in legal research, from doctrinal research, jurisprudential, legal theory, comparative legal analysis and introduce students to new approaches such as legal consciousness and therapeutic jurisprudence.

Week 4 – socio-legal approaches

This session will give an overview of socio-legal approaches to the law, seeing the law as a social phenomenon or social experience and considering different approaches to studying the law in action.

Week 5 and Week 6 – empirical approaches I and II

These sessions will cover different research methodologies, examining qualitative methods, quantitative methods, media analysis, ethnography, and digital methods.

Week 7 – choosing and evaluating research methods

This session will discuss the relationship between epistemology, ontology and methodology. It will equip students with the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate the fit between research questions and design. This session will also introduce students to critical perspectives, on gender, race and disability.

Over weeks 8-10 the students will do their presentations (i.e.2-3 per session)

Week 8 – ethical and practical considerations in research

This will include, research governance structures, how to get research approvals (such as ethics approval from the university, NHS Health Research Authority approvals and ethics, university sponsorship), how to plan research timing, how to recruit and ensure diversity in research.

Week 9 – writing a proposal.

Students will bring a short overview of their dissertation/thesis topic to discuss in the sessions. The session will cover thinking through how to design a dissertation/thesis, how to construct research questions, how to develop a feasible research proposal.

Week 10 – summary and review of PDP

This session will provide a summary of key learning points from the course and discussion of topics which students have identified as learning needs. It will also include time for students to review their PDP objectives for the semester and set further goals.

The module will combine face to face lectures and seminars with student led presentations. We will also set the students short activities, such as coding a section of an interview transcript, analysing survey data and critically examining key texts.

We will make use of Blackboard (and other online platforms) to host the learning materials, handouts, resource links, videos and other visual materials.

Students will be encouraged to engage with these by having pre-session reading, tasks and discussion board activities.

We will also hold designated office hours for the students to drop into discuss their research proposals and personal development plans. We will also hold focussed methodology clinics on particular methodologies, i.e. qualitative interviewing for those thinking of using those methods.

• Describe and understand the different methodological approaches used in law, socio-legal studies and bioethics.
• Understand how epistemological and ontological commitments shape research questions, design and methodologies.
• Understand how to formulate an answerable research question/s within the confines of time and resources, and in light of ethical considerations.
• Design a methodology to address their research questions and evaluate the strengths and limitations of their methodological choices.

• Lead, participate in and sustain seminar discussions.
• Critically analyse research methodologies in published papers.
• Present the methodological approach they are going to use in their dissertation and/or PhD proposal.

• Identify their own research training needs, prioritise these and take reasonable steps to address them.
• Develop a reflective Personal Development Plan and use it to demonstrate progress in developing an understanding of philosophical underpinnings and practical approaches to academic research.
• Identify (or refine) their dissertation/PhD topic.
• Write a masters and/or PhD research proposal.

On successful completion of this course unit, participants should have developed:

• Problem solving skills.
• Analytic and critical skills.
• The ability to communicate ideas effectively.
• The ability to identify their own learning needs and set appropriate goals.
• The ability to work successfully independently and/or cooperatively.

Obasogie & Darnovsky (2018) (eds) Beyond Bioethics: towards a new biopolitics. University of California Press.

Sugarman & Sulmasy (2010) (eds) Methods in Medical Ethics, second edition. Georgetown University Press.

Ives, Dunn & Cribb. (2016) (eds) Empirical Bioethics: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives.  Cambridge University Press.

Routledge Handbook of Socio-Legal Theory and Methods (2021) (eds) Creutzfeldt, Mason, McConnachie.

Research Handbook on Socio-Legal Studies of Medicine and Health. (2020) (eds) Jacob & Kirkland. Edward Elger Publishing.

Oakley, A. 1998. Gender, methodology and people's ways of knowing: Some problems with feminism and the paradigm debate in social science. Sociology, 32(4): 707–732.

Mason, J. (2017). Qualitative researching. Sage.

Bellamy, C. (2011). Principles of methodology: Research design in social science. Sage.

Bechhofer, F., & Paterson, L. (2012). Principles of research design in the social sciences. Routledge.