Learning outcomes of the curricular unit

Main goal: to provide a journey of knowledge and skills acquisition to prepare future law professionals to act correctly and accurately when facing situations of a medico legal nature in their professional career, in order to contribute to justice, in the victims' best interest.

Specific goals:
1. To give a set of basic knowledge about medico-legal semiology and about the various areas of the medico-legal and other forensic sciences intervention, namely concerning its scope, goals and competences;

2. To provide guidelines on the legal intervention in general, concerning specific medico-legal cases bearing in mind the transdisciplinary cooperation that is fundamental to their resolution, not only on the medical and legal level bu also other areas such as social service and psychology;

3. To sensitize future law professionals, through the contact with real cases, to the importance of committing themselves to violence prevention initiatives (voluntary and involuntary)

Syllabus

Concept and scope of Legal Medicine and other forensic sciences. Types of medico-legal exames. Forensic Pathology: Goal of the medico-legal autopsy 

- determination of the cause of death; differential diagnosis between natural and violent deaths; medico-legal identification; cronology of wounds and date of death; diagnostic of the vitality of wounds. Phases of the autopsy. Ancilliary exams. Injuries and their biomechanics. Death scene investigation. Clinical Forensic Medicine: Evaluation and reparation of personal injury assessment in Penal, Civil and Labor Law. Sexual crimes 

- interview, physical and ancilliary exams. Domestic violence and abuse 

- Types and risk factors. Physical and psychological indicators. Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology. Forensic Genetics and Biology. Criminalistics. Forensic Toxicology. Forensic Anthropology and Dentistry.