Health Sciences

Medicine is so pervasive in the modern Western world it seems difficult sometimes to understand what it is. This course explores the complex ways medicine is shaped by, and in turn, shapes us and the world we live in; whether medicine can be conceived as a system of knowledge, a form of power or an example of professional practice. The course focuses on some of the core theoretical insights that have emerged from the sociological studies of medicine, health, disease, and illness and is divided into two sections. In the first part, students look at the nature of medical professions, the relationships between clinicians and patients, biomedical power and knowledge, the rise of information communication and technology, empowered patient subjectivity and patient activism. In the second half of the course, students discuss the rise and status of public health (including some reflections on the social consequences of the coronavirus) and key contemporary issues in biomedicine (such as geneticization, pharmaceuticalization and cyborgization). We discuss the social and ethical consequences of these new medical (bio)technologies that may go 'beyond therapy' to enhancement. The question that runs throughout the course is whether, there is occurring a wider transformation from medicalization to biomedicalization that has changed what medicine was.

This course introduces students to some of the main questions addressed by both the sociology of health and the sociology of gender. It applies a gender perspective to the sociology of health and uses health as an interesting topic to analyze gender inequalities and social norms. The first part of the course focuses on gender and health as sociological objects. The second part analyzes how health care systems interact with the very definition of gender by illustrating the case of intersexuality and transgenderism. The third part of the course focuses on two main topics: gender inequalities in health (examining both health outcomes and health as an occupation) and the study of specific health conditions that have a gendered dimension (like reproductive health, violence, infant feeding practices, or covid-19).

This course provides an overview of working in the United Kingdom and of the current economic situation in the country. It further discusses how the economic situation affects the workplace, how students can integrate into British working life, and how they can make the most of their internship placements. Topics include current political and economic climate, national legal framework, structure and workflow, integration of immigrants into the workforce, discrimination in the workplace, and comparison between U.K. and U.S. work experiences.

This course provides the philosophical and psychological basis of the discipline of Nursing from conception to death in terms of a human being's physical, psychological, social and spiritual spheres. The course also introduces the meta-paradigms of nursing: human beings, environment, and nursing practice. 

This course examines historical and current health policy issues and their impacts. It covers health policies mainly in the U.S. and Taiwan, but also looks at global health topics. The first part of the course discusses health care systems, such as the public insurance structures in the U.S. and Taiwan, health care reforms, and the long term care systems. The second part introduces health behavior related topics from the economic perspective, including the prescription drug market, the effects of smoking and drinking age regulations on health, the factors and consequences (education, employment, crime, etc.) of risky health behaviors, and the impact of environment on health.

This course introduces the general principles and mechanisms of drug actions including those that influence the absorption, distribution, biotransformation (metabolism), and excretion of drugs. Course topics include: clinical applications, adverse effects, drug toxicity, and structure-activity relationship. The course focuses on the pharmacology of the autonomic nervous system, central nervous system, and autacoids.

In this course, the clinical aspects of the various anxiety disorders are presented as well as knowledge of theories and models about the maintenance factors and their treatment implications. In the tasks, case histories of patients with anxiety disorders are arranged according to different focus points. The framework is built by the various anxiety disorders (specific phobia, social anxiety disorders, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder). Based on these different anxiety disorders three different theories concerning the etiology and maintenance factors of anxiety are studied 1) learning theory, 2) cognitive theory, and 3) biological models of anxiety. Treatment implications from these different theories are also studied.