Practicing Bioethics – serie

Set against a backdrop of cultural diversity, the current emphasis on advance care planning, both in the United States and abroad, necessitates a sourcebook on how to navigate such complex terrain. This book will serve as a guide to best practice for advance care planning in a multicultural society. Such a guide will help those trying to engage in the often delicate discussions that take place during advance care planning to do so in a culturally sensitive manner. In addition, the book will provide general guidance in discussing difficult issues in a multicultural clinical setting. Given how entrenched advance care planning is in the medical context, to not attempt to engage in the process in a culturally sensitive way smacks of a dangerous indifference and sets the stage for conflict where calm could exist. In the fast-paced world of clinical medicine, recognizing and acknowledging differences in worldviews is often overlooked. When dealing with the delicate issues broached in advance care planning, such oversights can lead to deep rifts within the health care provider-patient relationship. This damage can be irreparable. By providing guidance to those engaged in such endeavors and setting advance care planning in a global context, health care practitioners will be better able to care for their patients and achieve the noble goal of advance care planning_giving volume to the voice of the patient in the last chapter of her life.

This collection of essays provides educators in medicine and the health sciences an illuminating and challenging introduction to professionalism. The book takes a practical approach toward this topic, looking at what professionalism means, for the individual physician's relationship to his or her patients, to the medical profession as a whole, and to society at large. Written by leading scholars and thinkers in the area of professionalism in medicine, contributors provide a well-rounded analysis of this important topic. Although the intended audience is primarily physicians, medical students and residents, the book is a suitable primer for pre-professional health care students as well.

This collection of essays provides educators in medicine and the health sciences an illuminating and challenging introduction to professionalism. The book takes a practical approach toward this topic, looking at what professionalism means, for the individual physician's relationship to his or her patients, to the medical profession as a whole, and to society at large. Written by leading scholars and thinkers in the area of professionalism in medicine, contributors provide a well-rounded analysis of this important topic. Although the intended audience is primarily physicians, medical students and residents, the book is a suitable primer for pre-professional health care students as well.

Despite the best efforts of medical ethicists over the past quarter century, the ethical challenges surrounding dying and death in the clinical setting remain largely unresolved, and little sustained attention has been paid to how thinking about death relates to and affects clinical practice. The reality is that people die, and that dying patients are not people for whom nothing can be done. Death in the Clinic provides medical students, residents, and educators a framework within which to explore and address this reality, while existential and philosophical questions about death will recommend the book to chaplains, social workers, palliative care clinicians, nurses, and clinical ethicists. Death in the Clinic fills a gap in contemporary medical education by explicitly addressing the concrete clinical realities about death with which practitioners, patients, and their families continue to wrestle.

Despite the best efforts of medical ethicists over the past quarter century, the ethical challenges surrounding dying and death in the clinical setting remain largely unresolved, and little sustained attention has been paid to how thinking about death relates to and affects clinical practice. The reality is that people die, and that dying patients are not people for whom nothing can be done. Death in the Clinic provides medical students, residents, and educators a framework within which to explore and address this reality, while existential and philosophical questions about death will recommend the book to chaplains, social workers, palliative care clinicians, nurses, and clinical ethicists. Death in the Clinic fills a gap in contemporary medical education by explicitly addressing the concrete clinical realities about death with which practitioners, patients, and their families continue to wrestle.