Medical Law Ethics Bioethics For The Health Professions

Now in its Seventh Edition and in vivid full-color, this groundbreaking book continues to champion the “Have a Care” approach, while also providing readers with a strong ethical and legal foundation that enables them to better serve their clients. The book addresses all major issues facing healthcare professionals today, including legal concerns, important ethical issues, and the emerging area of bioethics.

"It is imperative that any health-care professional have knowledge of medical law, ethics, and bioethics so that clients are treated with understanding, sensitivity, and compassion. No matter what the professional's education, experience, or position, any client contact involves ethical and legal responsibility. It also is imperative that this knowledge be used to provide the best possible service for the provider and employer. Our goal is to provide the health-care professional with an adequate resource for the study of medical law, ethics, and bioethics"--

Medical Law and Ethics is a feature-rich introduction to medical law and ethics, discussing key principles, cases, and statutes. It provides examination of a range of perspectives on the topic, such as feminist, religious, and sociological, enabling readers to not only understand the law but also the tensions between different ethical notions.

Ethics and Law for the Health Professions is a cross-disciplinary medico-legal book, the first edition of which was widely used in the medical world. We believe it is also of immense use to the legal world when grappling with medico-legal issues. Its special features are its focus on a clinically-relevant approach and its recognition that health care professionals are often confronted with legal and ethical issues simultaneously. Health professionals have to satisfy both, and their legal advisers need to be aware of the dilemmas this can present. This book is careful to distinguish between ethics and law. Its chapters take account of all the health professions and their differing responsibilities, and the book covers a very wide range of the issues they face.

This title was first published in 2002.The wide range of essays contained within this volume present contemporary thinking on the legal and ethical implications surrounding modern medical practice.

Law and Ethics for Health Professions explains how to navigate the numerous legal and ethical issues that health care professionals face every day. Topics are based upon real-world scenarios and dilemmas from a variety of health care practitioners. Through the presentation of Learning Outcomes, Key Terms, From the Perspective of, Ethics Issues, Chapter Reviews, Case Studies, Internet Activities, Court Cases, and Video Vignettes, students learn about legal and ethical problems and situations that health care professions currently face. In the eighth edition, chapter 3 contains an expanded section on accreditation of hospitals and other patient care facilities, and of health care education programs. Students also use critical thinking skills to learn how to resolve real-life situations and theoretical scenarios and to decide how legal and ethical issues are relevant to the health care profession in which they will practice.

Explores the philosophical and practical ethical implications of a definition of health as a state that allows us to reach our goals. Definitions of health and disease are of more than theoretical interest. Understanding what it means to be healthy has implications for choices in medical treatment, for ethically sound informed consent, and for accurate assessment of policies or programs. This deeper understanding can help us create more effective public policy for health and medicine. It is notable that such contentious legal initiatives as the Americans with Disability Act and the Patients' Bill of Rights fail to define adequately the medical terms on which their effectiveness depends. In Ethics and the Metaphysics of Medicine, Kenneth Richman develops an "embedded instrumentalist" theory of health and applies it to practical problems in health care and medicine, addressing topics that range from the philosophy of science to knee surgery. "Embedded instrumentalist" theories hold that health is a match between one's goals and one's ability to reach those goals, and that the relevant goals may vary from individual to individual. This captures the normative implications of the term health while avoiding problematic relativism. Richman's embedded instrumentalism differs from other theories of health in drawing a distinction between the health of individuals as biological organisms and the health of individuals as moral agents. This distinction illuminates many difficulties in patient-provider communication and helps us understand conflicts between promoting health and promoting ethically permissible behavior. After exploring, expanding, and defending this theory in the first part of the book, Richman examines its ethical implications, discussing such concerns as the connection between medical beneficence and respect for autonomy, patient-provider communication, living wills, and clinical education.