Being a patient is a unique interpersonal experience but it is also a universal human experience. The relationships formed when we are patients can also teach some of life's most important lessons, and these relationships provide a special window into ethics, especially the ethics of healthcare professionals. This book answers two basic questions: As patients see it, what things allow relationships with healthcare providers to become therapeutic? What can this teach us about healthcare ethics? This volume presents detailed descriptions and analyses of 50 interviews with 58 patients, representing a wide spectrum of illnesses and clinician specialties. The authors argue that the structure, rhythm, and horizon of routine patient care are ultimately grounded in patient vulnerability and clinician responsiveness. From the short interview segments, the longer vignettes and the full patient stories presented here emerge the neglected dimensions of healthcare and healthcare ethics. What becomes visible is an ethics of everyday interdependence, with mutual responsibilities that follow from this moral symbiosis. Both professional expressions of healthcare ethics and the field of bioethics need to be informed and reformed by this distinctive, more patient-centered, turn in how we understand both patient care as a whole and the ethics of care more specifically. The final chapters present revised codes of ethics for health professionals, as well as the implications for medical and health professions education.

This book explores the moral lives of mental health clinicians serving the most marginalized individuals in the US healthcare system. Drawing on years of fieldwork in a community psychiatry outreach team, Brodwin traces the ethical dilemmas and everyday struggles of front line providers. On the street, in staff room debates, or in private confessions, these psychiatrists and social workers confront ongoing challenges to their self-image as competent and compassionate advocates. At times they openly question the coercion and forced-dependency built into the current system of care. At other times they justify their use of extreme power in the face of loud opposition from clients. This in-depth study exposes the fault lines in today's community psychiatry. It shows how people working deep inside the system struggle to maintain their ideals and manage a chronic sense of futility. Their commentaries about the obligatory and the forbidden also suggest ways to bridge formal bioethics and the realities of mental health practice. The experiences of these clinicians pose a single overarching question: how should we bear responsibility for the most vulnerable among us?

Originally published in 1999, this classic textbook includes twenty-six cases with commentary and bibliographic resources designed especially for medical students and the training of ethics consultants. The majority of the cases reflect the day-to-day moral struggles within the walls of hospitals. As a result, the cases do not focus on esoteric, high-tech dilemmas like genetic engineering or experimental protocols, but rather on fundamental problems that are pervasive in basic healthcare delivery in the United States: where to send a frail, elderly patient who refuses to go to a nursing home, what role the family should play in making a treatment decision, what a hospital should do when it is getting stuck with too many unpaid bills. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition includes thirteen new cases, five of which are designated as "skill builder" cases aimed specifically at persons who wish to conduct clinical ethics case consultations. The new cases highlight current ethical challenges that arise in caring for populations such as undocumented immigrant patients, persons with substance use disorders involving opioids, and ethical issues that arise beyond the bedside at the organizational level. The reader is invited to use the supplemental videos and assessment tools available on the website of the Loyola University Chicago ACES project (www.LUC.edu/ethicsconsult).

This book sets the scene for the deliberations on ethics and its application to healthcare in the twenty-first century. The word ethics, in classical Greek, means the “beliefs of the people” the study of what is right and good in human conduct and the justification of such claims. Without a doubt this task is not simply about setting up a list of rights and wrongs. Rather, it is a discussion, a process that helps tease out the real issues and find and teach ethical solutions to complex practical problems. The centrality of the patient is of prime consideration in this book, and the health of the individual patient is the first consideration in the teaching considerations discussed. Applied ethics in healthcare may have lost sight of what traditional ethics was trying to accomplish: a good life for good people over a lifetime in society with others. We must put biomedical ethics into perspective and develop a truly comprehensive approach to health care ethics. On the practical level, we need structures integrating givers ethical perspectives. But, there seems to be a gap and significant perception differences among healthcare providers’ learning environments and actual professional situations. Hence, teaching ethics and healthcare providers values is important to bridge this gap.

It's hard out there on the frontlines of healthcare when it comes to medical ethics. Sometimes it feels like the world is making up the rules as we go along. Sometimes it feels like we cannot get our moral balance as the landscape changes and seemingly grows more complicated every day. But no matter what the world throws at us each day, we have a choice of how to respond. It is easy to say we will do the right thing for our patients, but how do we know what that really means? How do we reconcile the cultural context that has entered healthcare? How do we span the gap between what is legal and what is ethical? How do we continue to care for patients without having anxiety, confusion, and fear? This book presents some of the basic principles of medical ethics and their application to everyday healthcare. Hopefully, the reader will begin to understand some of the underlying concepts of medical ethics that can be readily applied to their practice. Moreover, Dr. Cen hopes that this book sparks the reader's interest in medical ethics and increases their engagement in discussion, legislation, and policies decision-making about medical ethics.Dr. Puxiao Cen is an invasive cardiologist, board-certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology, nuclear cardiology, and comprehensive echocardiography. She has been a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology since 2003 and has been caring for the people of the Orlando, FL area for two decades. Puxiao is also a physician member of the Medical Ethics Committee for the area health system and Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida, College of Medicine. In addition to being a physician and a medical ethicist, Puxiao is a mother, world traveler (Dora the Explorer comes to mind), painter, history student, and a cultural connoisseur. She is a woman who puts her whole heart, mind, and soul into everything she does-she is the epitome of a Philomath. But, labels do not do her justice. Puxiao doesn't just absorb all that the world has to offer and keep that learning and knowledge locked away inside her. Dr. Cen considers it her mission to process and refine the knowledge she has gained from her experiences and distill it down to the salient points so she can recommunicate that knowledge in a manner that can benefit everyone. That philosophy was the motivation behind writing Everyday Medical Ethics. Dr. Cen wants to help impart some of the lessons she has learned as a medical ethicist in a major health system to the general public. By doing so, she hopes that the healthcare professional, patients, their families, and the communities in which they live can better navigate the modern world of healthcare. Even though this book is being published during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Puxiao actually completed the book in late 2018, so there are no case studies or references to COVID19 in the book. However, the basic principles discussed in the book are foundational to understanding medical ethics and can be applied to patient care and research ethics during the pandemic.

Deals entirely with personal ethical matters that affect the physician in his or her everyday professional life rather than with global or societal ethical issues such as euthanasia or genetic engineering. This book deals with the concept of "doing right" regarding generally accepted principles for individual behavior, especially in relation to patient care and within the context of the everyday life of the physician. First concern is doing right for and with patients in interactions in the: personal patient environment (family, home), medical environment (office, hospital) and community resources (nursing home). Other physician roles - teaching, research, administration, community resources (nursing home) are also pertinent to doing right.

This is a unique, innovative professional nursing ethics textbook designed specifically for all practicing nurses and to meet the educational needs of all nursing students, including RN to BSN and RN to MSN students. Written by experts in the field, it discusses ethical concepts relevant to the registered nurse who has practiced for several years but is learning higher level concepts and applications. This text addresses different areas of professional practice and is rich with case studies illustrating the need for ethical competence and decision making. The book fulfills the necessary criteria for the AACN Essentials for Baccalaureate Education and the QSEN and IOM competencies. It also integrates relevant provisions and statements from the revised Code for Nurses (ANA, 2015). Clear and concise, the text relates content to the nurse's current practice and introduces a framework for the development of ethical competence, from recognition of an ethical situation to implementation of a justifiable action. A decision-making model that includes elements of care and virtue ethics is also included. Essential communication and conflict skills are addressed, in addition to the role of the ethics committee and ethics consultation. The book discusses common ethical issues likely to be encountered, how to recognize and address moral distress, and ethical practice as it relates to research, quality, and safety. Case studies that incorporate evidence-informed research provide the opportunity to develop ethical skills and apply decisionmaking principles. Relevant QSEN competencies and provisions and statements from the ANA's revised Code for Nurses (2015) are featured in each chapter. Interactive exercises and questions and PowerPoints provide further opportunity for critical thinking. KEY FEATURES: Addresses the specific needs of practicing nurses and students in the RN to BSN and RN to MSN courses Fulfills AACN Essentials, IOM competencies, and QSEN KSAs Integrates relevant provisions and statements from the revised Code for Nurses (ANA, 2015) Builds upon previous practice experience Discusses ethical competence in a variety of practice environments Includes case studies to apply ethical competencies