Educating thoughtful and responsible leaders includes developing an awareness and ability to respond to ethical issues commonly encountered in the health care setting and facing health care administrators.

In SPHA 563 (MHA Year Two), students will examine various ethical dilemmas that emerge in the health-care setting. The course begins by looking at some ethical principles and seeing how they can help address dilemmas arising in the clinical and organizational settings. In particular, students will focus on ethical issues arising in the health care system, and how certain features of the system may contribute to or perpetuate some of these problems. This includes an exploration of how various ethical frameworks and decision-making processes can enhance accountable and responsive care, and how our own value systems, professional codes of ethics, laws, public policies, and the larger social structure all affect ethical health-care decision making.

Read about other MHA courses our students are taking

Instructor Profile

Jennifer Warriner, BA, BA (Honours), MA, PhD, is a Clinical Ethics Fellow at Providence Health Care. Jennifer holds undergraduate degrees in English and Philosophy, and Women’s Studies, from the University of Calgary; a Masters degree in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University; and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Utah. Her dissertation research focused on theories of autonomy within liberalism. Her current research interest concerns issues of personal identity, dementia, and decisions regarding the end of life. Jennifer has served at the Ethicist for the Behavioural Research Ethics Board at the University of British Columbia since 2013. She has also served as one of the Ethicists for the Providence Clinical Research Ethics Board since 2015. Jennifer has taught as a sessional Instructor and limited-term Lecturer at Simon Fraser University since 2010.