The Center for Healthcare Ethics offers Doctorate, Master of Arts, and Certificate Program in Healthcare Ethics

Introduction
Duquesne University offers a full range of interdisciplinary programs in Healthcare Ethics, including a nine-credit Distance Learning Certificate program, a thirty-credit Master of Arts degree program, and two doctoral programs, one a Ph.D. in Healthcare Ethics with thirty-six credits of post-Masters work plus a six credit dissertation and the other a Doctor of Healthcare Ethics degree which does not require a dissertation. All programs include both academic and clinical components and are arranged so that students can take them full-time or part-time. Full-time certificate candidates can finish in one year, masters candidates in three semesters and an intervening summer. Students may enter in the Fall or Spring semesters. Most required courses except the clinical practica and doctoral internships are taught in the evenings from 6:00 to 8:40.

Online Graduate Certificate Program
The Online Graduate Certificate Program focuses upon developing and enhancing competencies for members of health care ethics committees. Typically, the Program consists of nine 1-credit courses from a variety of options and is delivered in a cohort format beginning in the Fall semester, continuing through the Spring semester, and ending in the Summer semester. Each cohort of students will participate in two retreat weekends, hosted in different sites, to initiate courses in the Fall and Spring semesters.

Master of Arts Degree
The M.A. program includes a total of ten courses (30 credits), five elective courses, plus five required courses: a general graduate-level introduction to ethics, a course in health care ethics, a course in the law of medical ethical issues, a course conflict resolution, and a clinical practicum. There is no thesis. The five elective courses will be chosen by the student with advisement, ordinarily from a list of appropriate courses offered in the university's various schools. Masters students may elect courses from the doctoral program.
Admission requirements are a Bachelor's Degree and, for clinicians, at least two years' professional experience in health care.

Doctoral Degree
The Doctoral Degree Programs require twelve courses (thirty-six credits) beyond the Masters. Nine of these are "academic" (classroom) courses. They are:

1. a course in philosophical ethics or in theological ethics (it is presumed that one or the other of these will have been taken as part of the masters and thus doctoral students will take the other one);
2. a course in the social justice issues of health care delivery and resource allocation;
3. a course in Jewish health care ethics;
4. a course in reproductive and genetic ethics;
5. a course in research ethics and multicultural issues

6. and

7. two advanced graduate courses in philosophical ethics or moral theology to be chosen from the advanced graduate courses in that area offered by the philosophy or theology department;
8. and
9. two elective courses to be chosen by the student with advisement by the program director, ordinarily from a list of courses offered in the University's various schools.

Three courses (nine credits) are clinical and consist of one further practicum to supplement that taken in the masters program and two internships. The supervised clinical internships are ordinarily taken after completion of all required courses and most of the electives. They consist of clinical placements as ethicist-in-residence at one of the institutions which constitute the Mercy Pittsburgh Health System or at other institutions, according to the needs and wishes of the student.

The doctoral student will be expected to serve as institutional ethicist in the assigned facility. Duties will include education of facility personnel through formal lectures and in service workshops and by joining in the teaching rounds of those facilities which have them, by provision of written and audio-visual materials, ethics research for facility personnel, etc.; development of policy on various ethical issues; and prospective and retrospective case consultation. Each three credits of internship will demand approximately 150 hours of work within the assigned facility.

The Ph.D. degree program then requires written and oral comprehensive exams and a six-credit dissertation. The DHCE program substitutes for the dissertation a project begun as part of the internship and completed in the form of written and oral comprehensive examinations complete the DHCE requirements.

Applicants with a masters or professional degree in a related field may be admitted and will be required to substitute for elective courses at the doctoral level those masters level courses for which they have no direct equivalency.

Students with a Bachelor's degree in a field related to health care ethics, such a humanities degree with a major or minor in ethics, may apply for admission to a doctoral program. The student would need an especially strong record to persuade the admissions committee that admission directly to a doctoral program is warranted. The student would not need to complete a masters degree, but would need to complete four courses with 12 graduate credit hours in addition to the twelve courses (36 credit hours of coursework) required for the doctoral degree: Foundations of Moral Theology (HCE 541 or THEO 541), Healthcare Ethics (HCE 546), Healthcare Law and Ethics (HCE 580), and Clinical Healthcare Ethics (HCE 646).