Fundamentals of medical thinking and acting (GÄDH)
- discuss ethical questions
- reflect on the medical understanding of science
- view medicine and health care in the context of society as a whole
- broadening one's own perspectives on health and illness or being ill
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Principles of GÄDH
The aim of the GÄDH course is to provide an exemplary foundation for clinical and theoretical training based on the concept of the natural sciences, and to expand on this through aspects of the humanities, cultural sciences and social sciences. GÄDH provides the opportunity to learn and practice argumentation and to form informed opinions through research and consideration.
GÄDH conveys the understanding
- that medicine and health care are always part of overall social processes,
- that the scientific concept of medicine allows only limited access to disease and healing, and
- that medical standards of knowledge, maxims of action and values are subject to a constant process of change.
Thematic areas of GÄDH
The teaching program of GÄDH is not oriented towards the systematics of the traditional medical disciplines and their basic sciences. Rather, it is intended to stimulate interdisciplinary reflection and to contribute to the development of different problem-related concepts of thought and action. This results in the following topics:
- the significance of cultural, (psycho-)social and gender-specific factors for illness and health, for the role of physician and patient, and for medical science and practice
- the interactions between medical knowledge and skills on the one hand and basic ethical and legal values on the other hand
- the basic structures and limits of the scientific model of thinking and other medical concepts; the meaning of important basic concepts of medical thinking and acting (e.g. diagnosis, disease, health, life, death)
- the basic structures and limits of the scientific model of thought.
Goals of GÄDH
Students will, among other things:
- learn to reflect on their own understanding of science.
- be sensitized to the changes in the historical and social context, the scientific theoretical understanding, the moral convictions in medicine
- learn to know and reflect on ethical and philosophical foundations of medical thinking and acting
- be enabled to deal sensitively and responsibly with different perspectives on health, illness and being ill.
Seminars
- GäDH09: Epidemics, Disease Control and the Robert Koch Institute in the 20th Century
- GäDH12: Between life and death - brain death as a concept of death
- GäDH17: The Charité under National Socialism
- GäDH29: Abortion: History(s), Controversies, Practices
- GäDH34: Medicine and Politics
- Participation, Adaptation, Expulsion, Resistance: Medical Behavior under National Socialism
- Forced sterilization, human experimentation and murder of the sick: medical crimes under National Socialism