Clinical Ethics: A Practical Approach to Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine ANNOTATION
"...promotes the strict adherance to ethics in the practice of clinical medicine...addresses such issues as informed consent, truth-telling, confidentiality, end-of-life care, pain relief, and patient rights." Appropriate for: Physicians, Healthcare Professionals.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Shows health care professionals how to identify, analyze, and resolve ethical issues in clinical medicine, using the Four-Box Method ( medical indications, patient preferences, quality of life, and contextual features). The Fifth Edition emphasizes evidence-based medicine, and explores new issues in treatment and research.
SYNOPSIS
The right choice
Face the ethical issues that arise in clinical practice with this proven, practical approach.
Clinical Ethics brings you:
* The Four Topics Method: An easy approach used to identify, analyze, and resolve ethical problems in clinical medicine
* Abundant, concise, illustrative clinical case examples
* Current opinion on today's most controversial issues, such as physician-assisted death, genetic testing and screening, and stem-cell transplantation
* Ethical considerations in research trials, palliative care, and other growing medical areas
* Practical coverage of legal issues
* One of the leading guides to ethical health care
FROM THE CRITICS
Doody Review Services
Reviewer: Julia A. Uihlein, MA (Medical College of Wisconsin)Description: This is the fifth edition of a practical guide and approach to clinical ethics. Four topics are used as an effective foundation and method of organizing ethical issues: medical indications; patient preference; quality-of-life and; contextual features. The previous edition was published in 1997.Purpose: The purpose is two-fold according to the three authors: first to offer a template that is useful in approaching the invariable complexities of situations clinicians encounter and second to offer as examples typical ethical problems that occur in medicine as well as resources to be used per ethical situation if further reading is needed. This format is extremely helpful in approaching ethical issues in medicine and can be used as a good organizational process for the analysis of ethical cases as well as writing ethics consultation reports. In this way, the authors most assuredly meet their promised objectives.Audience: The book is intended not only for clinicians and students, but other individuals involved in healthcare, including hospital administrators, hospital attorneys, members of institutional ethics committees, quality assurance reviewers and administrators of health plans. A reference is made by the authors that all of these individuals who work in healthcare need to be sensitive and responsive to maintaining ethical standards in clinical practice-a kind of "we're all in this together" stance. The one recognizable area of difficulty in this fine book is in its statement that a broad group of individuals who are in the health care fieldwould benefit from this reading. This is true, but overlooks the specific use of medical terminology that might not be understood by this broad of an audience. Having a medical dictionary on hand will be helpful for those individuals who are not clinicians. Having said this, the authors are very credible authorities on the subjects in the book.Features: The book completely and effectively covers most of all basic ethical issues that clinicians and others might encounter in medicine. Arguments and counterarguments, for example, about favoring or not paternalistic interventions in enigmatic refusal of healthcare (p. 74) are thoroughly discussed in all of their convolutions. There is a very comprehensive review of the interpretation of advanced directives and truth telling. The cases used throughout the book in the divisions of the four chapters mentioned above are excellent. Further credible resources are easily available in the middle of the discussions of ethical issues rather than having to refer to the back of the book in a resource section. The locator section at the end of the text is easily used to find particular subjects of interest by the reader. The only true shortcoming of the book is an inconsistency of explaining medical terminology. For example, terms such as moribund patient, terminal patient and futility are well defined. Then there are medical terms referenced such as infiltrating ductal carcinoma, uremia secondary to obstructive nephropathy and encephalopathic, which are used as if all readers have this knowledge base.Assessment: This book is an extremely useful book in the field of applied clinical ethics. A fifth printing certainly validates its usefulness, but may beg the question as well, "Is the fifth edition necessary?" The answer is a resounding "Yes." The authors seriously look at the issues in need of updating from its last printing, such as organizational ethics and the section on conflicts of interest. Even public health issues are covered since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.
RATING
4 Stars! from Doody
ACCREDITATION
Albert R. Jonsen, PhD; Professor Emeritus of Ethics in Medicine, Univ of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington
Mark Siegler, MD; Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine; Director, MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, Univ of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
William J. Winslade, PhD, JD; James Wade Rockwell Professor of Philosophy in Medicine, Institute for the Medical Humanities, Univ of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas.
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