N.M. King – författare

"The fixed person for fixed duties, who in older societies was such a godsend, in the future ill be a public danger." Twenty years ago, a single legal metaphor accurately captured the role that American society accorded to physicians. The physician was "c- tain of the ship." Physicians were in charge of the clinic, the Operating room, and the health care team, responsible - and held accountabl- for all that happened within the scope of their supervision. This grant of responsibility carried with it a corresponding grant of authority; like the ship's captain, the physician was answerable to no one regarding the practice of his art. However compelling the metaphor, few would disagree that the mandate accorded to the medical profession by society is changing. As a result of pressures from a number of diverse directions - including technological advances, the development of new health professionals, changes in health care financing and delivery, the recent emphasis on consumer choice and patients' rights - what our society expects phy- cians to do and to be is different now. The purpose of this volume is to examine and evaluate the conceptual foundations and the moral imp- cations of that difference. Each of the twelve essays of this volume assesses the current and future validity of the "captain of the ship" metaphor from a different perspective. The essays are grouped into four sections. In Section I, Russell Maulitz explores the physician's role historically.

The first time I read the medical consent and authorization. it had registered in my mind simply as a legal document. Now I began to understand what it meant. It was a letter of ultimate love and trust. (Schucking. 1985. p. 268) Ever since Karen Ann Quinlan slipped into permanent unconsciousness in 1975 and her father agonized publicly over whether she should remain indefinitely on a respirator (In re Quinlan, 1976), the desires of patients, their families, and their friends to limit the application of apparently limitless medical technology have been a pressing concern for ethics, law, and public policy. Ms. Quinlan's case contained nearly all the elements of the problems we still face: vague, general, but sincere prior oral statements suggesting that she would not want continued treatment; a family attempting to do what they saw as best for her; and physicians uncertain whether to use medical judgment alone (and if so, what the "right" medical decision was), to preserve her life at all costs, or to honor the family's interpretation of their daughter's choice. Most ironically, once she was removed from her respirator, she did not die. Karen Quinlan - like dozens of other names made famous by court decisions, newspaper stories, and television evening news - has come to symbolize a tangled knot of issues surrounding the end of life and who controls it.