Health Sciences

The first part of this course focuses on the self, identity, health, and society. Core concepts within interdisciplinary approaches to health identities are explored, including biographical disruption, stigma, disability, and the self. Next, the course looks at experiences of health, illness, and impairment in society. A series of three case studies is presented in which staff from across the school (Clinical Psychology, Nursing Studies, Counselling, Psychotherapy, and Applied Social Sciences) offer accounts of their experiences working with people living with key health issues (e.g. chronic illness, dementia, or depression). Finally, the course studies organizational and societal responses. It outlines contemporary responses to the perceived challenges of providing health and social care in a globalized and growing population. Issues covered include patients as partners, empowerment, and person-centered care.

This course deals with the philosophical issues surrounding abortion, euthanasia and organ transplants. Through investigating the moral and ethical grounds on which decisions are made, students objectively and critically examine ethical problems.

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.