A practical, insightful guide to the moral and ethical standards of healthcare
Succeeding in the healthcare field means more than just making a diagnosis and writing a prescription. Healthcare professionals are responsible for convincing patients and their family members of the best course of action and treatments to follow, while knowing how to make the right moral and ethical choices, and so much more. Unlike daunting and expensive texts, Medical Ethics For Dummies offers an accessible and affordable course supplement for anyone studying medical or biomedical ethics. Follows typical medical and biomedical ethics courses Covers real ethical dilemmas doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers may face Includes moral issues surrounding stem cell research, genetic engineering, euthanasia, and more Packed with helpful information, Medical Ethics For Dummies arms aspiring medical professionals with the philosophical and practical foundation for advancing in a field where critical ethical and moral decisions need to be rapidly and convincingly made.
Introduction 1
Part I: Medical Ethics, or Doing the Right Thing 7
Chapter 1: What Are Medical Ethics? 9
Chapter 2: Morality in Medicine 19
Chapter 3: The Provider-Patient Relationship 33
Chapter 4: Outside the Examining Room: Running an Ethical Practice 55
Chapter 5: Learning from Mistakes: Disclosing Medical Errors 73
Part II: A Patients Right to Request, Receive, and Refuse Care 93
Chapter 6: The Ethical Challenges in Distributing Basic Healthcare 95
Chapter 7: When Spirituality and Cultural Beliefs Affect Care 113
Chapter 8: Parental Guidance and Responsibilities 127
Part III: Ethics at the Beginning and End of Life 147
Chapter 9: Two Lives, One Patient: Pregnancy Rights and Issues 149
Chapter 10: When Science Supersedes Sex: Reproductive Technology and
Surrogacy 171
Chapter 11: Walking a Fine Line: Examining the Ethics of Abortion 195
Chapter 12: Determining Death: Not an Event, but a Process 219
Chapter 13: Death with Dignity: The Right to Appropriate End-of-Life Care
233
Part IV: Advancing Medical Knowledge with Ethical Clinical Research 257
Chapter 14: Toward Trials without Error: The Evolution of Ethics in Clinical
Research 259
Chapter 15: Beyond Guinea Pigs: Anatomy of an Ethical Clinical Trial 275
Chapter 16: Research in Special Populations 293
Chapter 17: Its All in the Genes: The Ethics of Stem Cell and Genetic
Research 307
Part V: The Part of Tens
331
Chapter 18: Ten Ethical Issues to Address with Your Patients 333
Chapter 19: Ten High-Profi le Medical Ethics Cases 341
Chapter 20: Almost Ten Ethical Issues for the Future 349
Index 353
Jane Runzheimer, MD, is a family physician who has served on the Ethics Committee of Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
Linda Johnson Larsen has written 24 books, many of which have an emphasis on health, and has been a patient advocate for her husband and several family members.
