Today's practicing physician must grapple daily with ethical decisions. The issues presented are ones which physicians will find relevant to their day-to-day practice: financial incentives inherent for fee-for-service medicine versus managed care, sexual relationships between doctor and patient, the impaired doctor, disclosure of errors, disputes between residents and attendings and more.
Includes an expanded section on initiating and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment and new sections on cost containment and on AIDS. Five new ethics cases deal with the potential for finances to influence decision-making, the duty of physicians to treat HIV-positive patients, the dilemma of dealing with an impaired colleague, physician-assisted suicide, and the ethics of sexual contact between physician and patient.
This classic in medical ethics circles presents a broad overview of moral, ethical, and philosophical theories before a lengthy discussion of four ethical principles: autonomy, nonmalevolence, beneficence, and justice. Also contains chapters on professional-patient relationships, and ideals, virtues, and conscientiousness. The last part of the book contains case studies.
