Health Care Ethics In Canada

Health Care Ethics in Canada, second edition is a carefully selected collection of readings covering critical issues in health care ethics. Topics that are unique to the Canadian market such as resource allocation and rationing, as well as universal issues including consent, research involving human subjects, genetics, abortion, and assisted reproductive technologies are explored. With over 50 readings, Health Care Ethics in Canada, second edition, provides a wide variety of perspectives on the social and institutional settings of health care delivery, and the impact culture has on that delivery.

Written by one of the leading Canadian authorities on health care ethics, Ethics in Health Care: A Canadian Focus presents the key ethical issues surrounding several health care topics within the context of the Canadian social and legal system. With a strong emphasis on the application of theory, Ethics provides readers with the conceptual tools for making their own informed judgements. Furthermore, each topic is considered within the context of the rapid acceleration of contemporary technologies and their impact on traditional perspectives on the delivery of health care.

Readings in Health Care Ethics provides a wide-ranging selection of important and engaging contributions to the field of health care ethics. The second edition adds a chapter on health care in Canada, and the introduction has been expanded to include discussion of a new direction in feminist naturalized ethics. The book presupposes no prior knowledge, only an interest in the bioethical issues that are shaping our world.

The third edition of Health Care Ethics in Canada builds on the commitment to Canadian content established in earlier editions without sacrificing breadth or rigor. Through a collection of selected readings, this textbook covers core issues while simultaneously bringing a fresh new perspective based on recent developments in health care. It is an up-to-date, comprehensive textbook that brings a wide range of perspectives and issues to the table on the social and institutional settings of health care delivery and the role that culture plays. This textbook aims to provide a variety of Canadian perspectives on both longstanding and emerging trends in Canadian health care.

This volume is the result of a conference sponsored by the Medical Alumni Association of the University of California, Davis and held in Sacramento, California, in January, 2000, The purpose of this conference was to examine the impact ofvarious health care structures on the ability of health care professionals to practice in an ethically acceptable manner. One of the ground assumptions made is that ethical practice in medicine and its related fields is difficult in a setting that pays only lip service to ethical principles. The limits of ethical possibility are created by the system within which health care professionals must practice. When, for example, ethical practice necessitates—as it generally does—that health care professionals spend sufficient time to come to know and understand their patients’ goals and values but the system mandates that only a short time be spent with each patient, ethical practice is made virtually impossible. One of our chief frustrations in teaching health care ethics at medical colleges is that we essentially teach students to do something they are most likely to find impossible to do: that is, get to know and appreciate their patients’ goals and values. There are other ways in which systems alter ethical possibilities. In a system in which patients have a different physician outside the hospital than they will inside, ethical problems have a different shape than if the treating physician is the same person.