Tough Decisions: Cases in Medical Ethics

Life is full of tough decisions that must be made ethically and under the pressures of time. This book places readers in realistic situation where they experience the difficulties of making tough medical decisions. The cases are composites of actual cases the authors have seen or managed. In the role of decision-maker, the reader helps to determine what happens in the case as his or her decision often shapes the course of events and the patient's outcome. This gives a compelling sense of the pressures that bear on clinical decision-making. The authors assume that the reader wants to do the right thing, but faces the problem of determining what the right thing will be when information is necessarily incomplete and the future unknown. Ethical theory emerges as others involved in the case offer different views of what is right in a particular medical situation. Two concluding chapters discuss the major theories of medical ethics, but there are no answers in the back of the book. Instead, the book will familiarize readers with some of the ethical principles and issues critical to the practice of medicine to patients and their families.