Mainstream discussions of ethics often search for a problem-solving theory or explore ontological status. This book argues instead that the proper starting point should be the words and deeds of ordinary people in ordinary disagreements - the ethical concepts in play can only derive full meaning within the context of ordinary human lives.

"Good Care, Painful Choices surveys the ethical decisions that must be made by ordinary people who deal with medicine today - ranging from beginning-life issues such as test-tube babies and surrogate motherhood to end-of-life issues such as advance directives, patient refusal of treatment, and physician-assisted suicide. This third edition gives special attention to partial-birth abortion and to recent discoveries in genetics involving stem cells, cloning, and eugenics." "The strength of the book comes from its foundation in basic moral principles that stress personhood, moral decision making, and conscience. Decidedly Christian, the book gives special emphasis to the Roman Catholic tradition. It will be welcomed by Catholics, by Christians of all denominations, and by anyone interested in a careful overview of contemporary medical ethics."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This volume of original work comprises a modest challenge, sometimes direct, sometimes implicit, to the mainstream Anglo-American conception of the discipline of medical ethics. It does so not by trying to fill the gaps with exotic minority interest topics, but by re-examining some of the fundamental assumptions of the familiar philosophical arguments, and some of the basic situations that generate the issues. The most important such situation is the encounter between the doctor and the suffering patient, which forms one of the themes of the book. The authors show that concepts such as the body, suffering and consent - and the role such concepts play within patients' lives - are much more complicated than the Anglo-American mainstream appreciates. Some of these concepts have been discussed with subtlety by Continental philosophers (like Heidegger, Ricoeur), and a secondary purpose of the volume is to apply their ideas to medical ethics. Designed for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students with some philosophical background in ethics, Reconceiving Medical Ethics opens up new avenues for discussion in this ever-developing field.

The doctor-patient relationship is fraught with risk. Patients may be at risk from a doctor who misuses their position of authority, or is unclear where the appropriate boundaries lie. Doctors risk disciplinary or criminal proceedings when this happens. This book aims to address these risks, to assist clinicians in their daily relationships with patients, and to improve patient safety. The authors examine the ethical principles and how these may be taught; prevalence of abuse; regulation and sanctions; management and governance; remediation; and the roles of the different organisations that may be involved, such as the General Medical Council and medical protection societies. This is a practical guide to help clinicians avoid boundary violations and improve patient safety.

This book untangles the relationship between expert categorisations of risk and the on-the-ground experiences of untrained ‘ordinary’ people who may be routinely subjected to significant danger in a variety of extraordinary contexts. It considers political, ethical and moral dimensions of risk and calls for more targeted ethnographic research, designed to reveal how grass-roots risk dispositions and practice intersect with official discourses, individual agency and community resilience.

This is the first attempt to explain how Jewish doctors survived extreme adversity in Auschwitz where death could occur at any moment. The ordinary Jewish slave labourer survived an average of fifteen weeks. Ross Halpin discovers that Jewish doctors survived an average of twenty months, many under the same horrendous conditions as ordinary prisoners. Despite their status as privileged prisoners Jewish doctors starved, froze, were beaten to death and executed. Many Holocaust survivors attest that luck, God and miracles were their saviors. The author suggests that surviving Auschwitz was far more complex. Interweaving the stories of Jewish doctors before and during the Holocaust Halpin develops a model that explains the anatomy of survival. According to his model the genesis of survival of extreme adversity is the will to live which must be accompanied by the necessities of life, specific personal traits and defence mechanisms. For survival all four must co-exist.