Aims And Motives In Clinical Medicine

Out Of Print... 'Difficult decisions can worry everyone in clinical practice with remarkable suddenness'. This book provides a set of guidelines in the form of questions which allow ethical decisions to be reached by an individual faced with an ethical problem; concentrates on a practical rather than a theorctical approach to medical ethics; avoids ethical jargon, and is easy for the practising clinician to read and understand. It includes many practical clinical examples within the text to allow the reader to identify with the problem. The book is not just another philosophical treatise around the subject of medical ethics. It is intended to be read as a whole, and the chapters are meant to illustrate the book's message rather than to be summaries of particular situations or problems. The traditional approach and its basis is analysed and shown to have arisen piecemeal as ethical crises have occurred. This approach is illustrated through a review of the problems of responsibility, and an examination of the more recent problems of abortion and organ transplantation. In this way the problems are defined, some being moral as in abortion, and some technical as in the definition of death. Chapter 5 sets out the guideline questions which can be applied to all such problems and is the centre chapter of the book. Subsequent chapters examine the use of the guidelines, applying them to medical research, both basic and applied, drug trials, telling the truth, over-investigation and over-treatment. There is a chapter in which a forward look is made towards the future and the ways in which the guidelines may be useful. Finally there is a chapter on the importance of motivation, since ethical guidelines can only be of value if the individual is motivated into using them, and is not wholly under the influence of self-interest. The book is lucidly written and is full of wise, penetrating and compassionate thought. It is written for a wide audience-practising clinicians everywhere, be they doctors or nurses; hospital administrators; medical social workers; medical and nursing students; paramedical student groups.