Undergraduate - UnitATS3717 - Medicine, health and society

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Sociology
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Narelle Warren

Synopsis

This unit examines the social and cultural dimensions of medicine and health care. Drawing on medical sociology and related perspectives the unit features: medicine in historical perspective; biopolitics and the medicalization debate; health inequalities; illness experience; professional knowledge and power; risk assessment and management; public health and health promotion; and digital health. The unit will be of interest to any student wanting to engage with social perspectives on medical and health care.

Outcomes

All students completing this unit will be able to:

Identify and describe key social science perspectives on medicine and health care in contemporary society.
Discuss the implications of medicine and health care for individuals and communities.
Apply critical arguments to current problems, debates and controversies.
Identify implications for public policy.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.