The Faculty of Law of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has initiated a medico-legal project aimed at promoting professionalism amongst healthcare professionals.
The project dubbed, ‘ON-SITE Medical Ethics Workshops’, seeks to minimize the incidence of medical malpractice by reminding healthcare professionals of their ethical and legal duties towards patients.
The agenda is to ensure that healthcare professionals adhere to industry accepted medical ethical standards and guidelines in the course of their work.
Dr. Ernest Owusu-Dapaa, Dean of the Faculty, explained that the idea was to enhance successful patient interaction, improved outcomes, proper legal compliance, minimised financial losses, and reduction of any potential disputes or litigation during medical practice.
He was addressing the third edition of the ‘Eminent Legal Scholars and Lawyers Public Lecture Series’, at the Great Hall, in Kumasi.
The event was organised by the KNUST Law Faculty.
According to the Dean, the medico-legal outreach project was targeting hospitals, and designed to help expose
healthcare professionals to the medical ethics dilemmas confronting them daily and how to address them properly.
“The Faculty of Law is conscious of its duty towards the community locally and nationally,” he noted, saying the initiative was in line with the vision to position the faculty as a leading international science and technology-oriented legal education provider in Africa and beyond.
He hinted that the maiden version of the ‘ON-SITE Medical Ethics Workshops’ had been piloted successfully at the KNUST Hospital.
The project is being implemented at a time when medical jurisprudence, which is the scientific field that applies medical knowledge to legal problems, is being embraced by society, especially as patients become more aware of their rights.
The KNUST Law Faculty, established in 2003 with 57 pioneer students and 12 academic staff, has grown its enrolment currently to about 1000 students from diverse backgrounds pursuing varied academic programmes at the Bachelor of Laws (LLB), Master of Laws (LLM) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) levels.
The third edition of the ‘Eminent Legal Scholars and Lawyers Public Lecture Series’ was held on the theme
‘Reflections on the Role of the Ghanaian Legal System in Development.
It discussed the nature of the Ghanaian legal system and the role it has played and continues to play in development, highlighting the roles played by the legal profession, Parliament, the Executive and the Law Reform Commission in the law’s function in development.
