Step-by-Step Guide to write an essay assignment Help

You may choose your own topic to write your essay on - please make contact with David Hunter prior to the mid-semester break to run your chosen topic by him. Some example topics are below:

 

  1. Should the government pay smokers to quit?
  2. Critically assess the voluntary assisted suicide law in South Australia?
  3. Should international students have the same access to health care in Australia as Australian citizens?
  4. Should research on non-human primates be banned?
  5. What do you think is the most challenging ethical issue raised by COVID19? How do you think it should be resolved?
  6. Is genetic enhancement morally problematic?
  7. The ethics of "nudging" patients (or populations) to adopt healthier lifestyles
  8. Ethical issues and the nature of virtue in interprofessional conflict, teamwork, and patient care
  9. Duties of health professionals/workers to advocate for refugee health or climate change action or developing world health or indigenous health

O. The ethics of allocating resources to preventive (including "upstream" determinants) versus non-preventative health care

  1. The ethics of physical and/or mental health care in disaster zones
  2. The ethics of taxing meat (or other products with both individual and global/planetary health implications)

.3. Should participants in research in low-income countries be paid?

Marks. Your essay is worth 50% of your final grade and will be assessed using the Essay Marking Rubric.

Referencing. You may use any academic referencing style, but your referencing must be consistent.

Number of sources. Please see the essay marking rubric which outlines our expectations with respect to the number of sources. To pass, you need to reference at least three sources. To get a high distinction, you need to correctly reference at least 10 sources. The recommended readings for the topic do count toward these. You are encouraged to use the recommended readings but not required to.

Word count. 2500 words +/- 10%. References do not count towards the word count. Footnotes or endnotes, if you use any, do count.

Please see the reference to word count in the essay marking rubric.

 

Essay structure. Your essay should include the following.

 

  1. Raise the topic, state what you think the key ethical issues are, and indicate what you will do, e.g. by providing an overview of what the rest of your essay contains.
  2. Introduce the background facts needed for your analysis.
  3. This should be the bulk of your essay. Select relevant ethical theories and/or principles, and appropriately apply them. You may wish to use the 'Approach to ethical analysis and justification' that we have used during the course. The analysis should build toward a conclusion about what the most ethical course of action is. You need to reach a clear conclusion.
  4. End your essay by summarising the main points of your analysis and restating your conclusion.

Before writing the final draft of the essay, you should be clear about the answers to the following questions and be confident that your essay will make the answers clear to the marker:

  1. What is the position you wish to defend?

2   What are your reasons for defending it?

3   Are there any arguments against your position?

4   What are the strengths and weaknesses of these arguments?

5   How will you justify your position?

Research. You need to do independent research. You can use the University Library's search function

(http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library), or a reputable online database.

PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed ©›) focusses on health

and medicine, while Philpapers (http://philpapers.org G) focusses on philosophy, including ethics. When searching for literature, it is helpful to check the reference lists of any articles you read, looking for further articles of relevance (this is known as 'pearling'). If you are experiencing problems with your research (e.g. accessing or locating articles), you should ask for help from the University Library.

Help. If you are experiencing any other difficulties (e.g. confusion about some aspect of the topic or uncertainty about how to proceed), feel free to contact me: david.hunter@adelaide.edu.au

Resource. A really good resource on how to write a good ethics or philosophy essays is Jim Pryor's Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper: http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html E

I also wrote this tongue in check guide to writing a terrible essay/paper in bioethics: https://blogs.bmj.com/medical-

ethics/ 2013/10/07/how-to-write-a-crap-essaypaper-in-bioethics-or-how-to-write-bioethics-to-be-published-in-medical-journals/ G›

I also strongly recommend you engage with the Constructing and Assessing Ethical Arguments Module.

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