HCM-515: Health Law and Ethics

Module 02: Critical Thinking Assignment

Assignment Instructions

Examining Laws in Saudi Arabia (110 points)

Locate three current laws in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that impact healthcare in the country. For example, the right to healthcare is stipulated in Article 27 and 31 of the Basic Laws of Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Health issued a Patient’s Bill of Rights (PBR) in 2006. Do not use these examples in your research.

Write a 4–5-page paper detailing the laws you have located and researched.

Your paper should address the following substantive requirements:

• The code and section where these laws were located.
• The goal and purpose of each law.
• How these laws might improve health in the Kingdom
• Any concerns or issues with these laws.

Your paper should meet the following structural requirements:

• Four-to-five pages in length, not including the cover sheet and reference page.
• Formatted according to APA 7^th edition and Saudi Electronic University writing standards.
• Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of four scholarly articles. Two of these sources may be from the class readings, textbook, or lectures, but the other two must be external. The Saudi Digital Library is a good place to find these references.

You are strongly encouraged to submit all assignments to the Turnitin Originality Check prior to submitting them to your instructor for grading. If you are unsure how to submit an assignment to the Originality Check tool, review the Turnitin Originality Check Student Guide.

Sample Answer (Preview)

The following is a partial sample answer showing the approach, structure and referencing expected for this brief. It covers approximately 25–30% of the full 4–5 page (about 1,240-word) paper. Sources are cited in APA 7th edition style.

Introduction

Saudi Arabia regulates healthcare through statutes issued by Royal Decree and published by the Bureau of Experts at the Council of Ministers. This paper examines three current laws, apart from the Basic Law and the Patient’s Bill of Rights: the Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions (2005), the Cooperative Health Insurance Law (1999) and the Personal Data Protection Law (2021). For each law, the paper sets out where it is found, its goal and purpose, how it might improve health in the Kingdom and the concerns it raises.

Law 1: The Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions

Code and section

The Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions was issued by Royal Decree No. M/59 dated 4/11/1426H (6 December 2005). It has five chapters: licensing (Chapter 1), duties of healthcare professionals (Chapter 2), professional liability (Chapter 3), investigation and trial (Chapter 4) and concluding provisions (Chapter 5). The provisions most relevant to patients are Article 21, which requires professionals to keep patient information confidential, Article 27, which makes a professional liable for malpractice that harms a patient, and Article 41, which makes malpractice insurance compulsory for physicians and dentists (Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions, 2005).

Goal and purpose

The law protects patients by ensuring that only qualified, licensed professionals practise and that they are held to clear standards. Article 26 requires every professional to exercise due care in line with established professional standards. Article 27 lists specific forms of malpractice, such as treatment errors, inadequate follow-up and failure to consult when a patient’s condition requires it. Clear rules are especially important because the Saudi health workforce is expanding quickly and draws on professionals trained in many different countries (Al-Hanawi et al., 2019). Licensing under Chapter 1 and the duties in Chapter 2 give all of these professionals one common standard, whatever country they trained in.

How the law might improve health in the Kingdom

By linking liability to clear standards and requiring insurance under Article 41, the law gives harmed patients a realistic route to compensation and encourages facilities to invest in supervision and training. The confidentiality duty in Article 21 also supports trust, which encourages patients to share full information with clinicians…

[End of preview] The remaining sections are included in the full solution, which is available on order. They cover the rest of Law 1 (how it improves health and its concerns), Law 2 (the Cooperative Health Insurance Law), Law 3 (the Personal Data Protection Law and health data) and the conclusion.

References

Al-Hanawi, M. K., Khan, S. A., & Al-Borie, H. M. (2019). Healthcare human resource development in Saudi Arabia: Emerging challenges and opportunities—A critical review. Public Health Reviews, 40, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-019-0112-4

Cooperative Health Insurance Law, Royal Decree No. M/10 (1999) (Saudi Arabia). https://laws.boe.gov.sa/BoeLaws/Laws/LawDetails/87c1482d-fa95-41ea-98b6-a9a700f2a529/1

Law of Practicing Healthcare Professions, Royal Decree No. M/59 (2005) (Saudi Arabia). https://misa.gov.sa/app/uploads/2025/07/Law-of-Practicing-Healthcare-Professions.pdf

Personal Data Protection Law, Royal Decree No. M/19 (2021) (Saudi Arabia), as amended by Royal Decree No. M/148 (2023). https://sdaia.gov.sa/en/SDAIA/about/Documents/PersonalDataProtectionLaw.pdf