The mission of the Department of Bioethics is to improve public and professional understanding of the ethical issues involved in health sciences research, health care delivery, and health policy development through teaching, research and community dialogue.

The department has offices at the Case’s School of Medicine and at MetroHealth Medical Center and has faculty from multiple disciplines, including philosophy, religion, law, political science, anthropology, history, sociology, nursing and medicine.

The Master of Arts program provides students with a firm understanding of the intellectual content of the study of bioethics, of bioethical literature, and of the underlying philosophical arguments and empirical assumptions that inform it. Students are taught to understand the institutions and structures of health care and the ethical issues that arise in medical practice. They are trained to identify and analyze a range of clinical ethics issues.