A Short History of Medical Ethics

A Short History of Medical Ethics
Author: Albert R. Jonsen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2000
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0195134559

A physician says, "I have an ethical obligation never to cause the death of a patient," another responds, "My ethical obligation is to relieve pain even if the patient dies." The current argument over the role of physicians in assisting patients to die constantly refers to the ethical duties of the profession. References to the Hippocratic Oath are often heard. Many modern problems, from assisted suicide to accessible health care, raise questions about the traditional ethics of medicine and the medical profession. However, few know what the traditional ethics are and how they came into being. This book provides a brief tour of the complex story of medical ethics evolved over centuries in both Western and Eastern culture. It sets this story in the social and cultural contexts in which the work of healing was practiced and suggests that, behind the many different perceptions about the ethical duties of physicians, certain themes appear constantly, and may be relevant to modern debates. The book begins with the Hippocratic medicine of ancient Greece, moves through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, and the long history of Indian 7nd Chinese medicine, ending as the problems raised modern medical science and technology challenge the settled ethics of the long tradition.

The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine

The Hippocratic Oath and the Ethics of Medicine
Author: Steven H. Miles
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2005-06-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199759839

This engaging book examines what the Hippocratic Oath meant to Greek physicians 2400 years ago and reflects on its relevance to medical ethics today. Drawing on the writings of ancient physicians, Greek playwrights, and modern scholars, each chapter explores one of its passages and concludes with a modern case discussion. The Oath proposes principles governing the relationship between the physician and society and patients. It rules out the use of poison and a hazardous abortive technique. It defines integrity and discretion in physicians' speech. The ancient Greek medical works written during the same period as the Oath reveal that Greek physicians understood that they had a duty to avoid medical errors and learn from bad outcomes. These works showed how and why to tell patients about their diseases and dire prognoses in order to develop a partnership for healing and to build the credibility of the profession. Miles uses these writings to illuminate the meaning of the Oath in its day and in so doing shows how and why it remains a valuable guide to the ethical practice of medicine. This is a book for anyone who loves medicine and is concerned about the ethics and history of this profession.

Contemporary Bioethics

Contemporary Bioethics
Author: Mohammed Ali Al-Bar
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-05-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 3319184288

This book discusses the common principles of morality and ethics derived from divinely endowed intuitive reason through the creation of al-fitr' a (nature) and human intellect (al-‘aql). Biomedical topics are presented and ethical issues related to topics such as genetic testing, assisted reproduction and organ transplantation are discussed. Whereas these natural sources are God’s special gifts to human beings, God’s revelation as given to the prophets is the supernatural source of divine guidance through which human communities have been guided at all times through history. The second part of the book concentrates on the objectives of Islamic religious practice – the maqa' sid – which include: Preservation of Faith, Preservation of Life, Preservation of Mind (intellect and reason), Preservation of Progeny (al-nasl) and Preservation of Property. Lastly, the third part of the book discusses selected topical issues, including abortion, assisted reproduction devices, genetics, organ transplantation, brain death and end-of-life aspects. For each topic, the current medical evidence is followed by a detailed discussion of the ethical issues involved.

Rethinking Health Care Ethics

Rethinking Health Care Ethics
Author: Stephen Scher
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2018-08-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9811308306

​The goal of this open access book is to develop an approach to clinical health care ethics that is more accessible to, and usable by, health professionals than the now-dominant approaches that focus, for example, on the application of ethical principles. The book elaborates the view that health professionals have the emotional and intellectual resources to discuss and address ethical issues in clinical health care without needing to rely on the expertise of bioethicists. The early chapters review the history of bioethics and explain how academics from outside health care came to dominate the field of health care ethics, both in professional schools and in clinical health care. The middle chapters elaborate a series of concepts, drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, that set the stage for developing a framework that builds upon the individual moral experience of health professionals, that explains the discontinuities between the demands of bioethics and the experience and perceptions of health professionals, and that enables the articulation of a full theory of clinical ethics with clinicians themselves as the foundation. Against that background, the first of three chapters on professional education presents a general framework for teaching clinical ethics; the second discusses how to integrate ethics into formal health care curricula; and the third addresses the opportunities for teaching available in clinical settings. The final chapter, "Empowering Clinicians", brings together the various dimensions of the argument and anticipates potential questions about the framework developed in earlier chapters.

Doctors and Ethics

Doctors and Ethics
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2020-01-29
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9004418342

Medical ethics has been a constant adjunct of Western medicine from its origins in Greek times. Although the Hippocratic Oath has been intensely studied, until recently there has been very little historical work on medical ethics between the Oath and Thomas Percival's Medical Ethics of 1803, which is commonly thought of as the first treatise on modern medical ethics. This volume brings together original research which throws new light on how standards of behaviour for medical practitioners were articulated in the different religious, political and social as well as medical contexts from the classical period until the nineteenth century. Its ten essays will place the early history of medical ethics into the framework of the new social and intellectual history of medicine that has been developed in the last ten years.

The Question of Competence

The Question of Competence
Author: Brian D. Hodges
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2012-10-11
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0801465362

Medical competence is a hot topic surrounded by much controversy about how to define competency, how to teach it, and how to measure it. While some debate the pros and cons of competence-based medical education and others explain how to achieve various competencies, the authors of the seven chapters in The Question of Competence offer something very different. They critique the very notion of competence itself and attend to how it has shaped what we pay attention to—and what we ignore—in the education and assessment of medical trainees. Two leading figures in the field of medical education, Brian D. Hodges and Lorelei Lingard, drew together colleagues from the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands to explore competency from different perspectives, in order to spark thoughtful discussion and debate on the subject. The critical analyses included in the book’s chapters cover the role of emotion, the implications of teamwork, interprofessional frameworks, the construction of expertise, new directions for assessment, models of self-regulation, and the concept of mindful practice. The authors juxtapose the idea of competence with other highly valued ideas in medical education such as emotion, cognition and teamwork, drawing new insights about their intersections and implications for one another.

Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake

Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake
Author: T. A. Cavanaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2018
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0190673672

This book articulates the Hippocratic Oath as establishing the medical profession by a promise to uphold an internal medical ethic that particularly prohibits doctors from killing. In its most basic and least controvertible form, this ethic mandates that physicians help and not harm the sick.

Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen

Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen
Author: Jacques Jouanna
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2012-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004208593

This volume makes available in English translation a selection of Jacques Jouanna's papers on Greek and Roman medicine, ranging from the early beginnings of Greek medicine to late antiquity.

The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates

The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates
Author: Peter E. Pormann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108593607

Hippocrates is a towering figure in Greek medicine. Dubbed the 'father of medicine', he has inspired generations of physicians over millennia in both the East and West. Despite this, little is known about him, and scholars have long debated his relationship to the works attributed to him in the so-called 'Hippocratic Corpus', although it is undisputed that many of the works within it represent milestones in the development of Western medicine. In this Companion, an international team of authors introduces major themes in Hippocratic studies, ranging from textual criticism and the 'Hippocratic question' to problems such as aetiology, physiology and nosology. Emphasis is given to the afterlife of Hippocrates from Late Antiquity to the modern period. Hippocrates had as much relevance in the fifth-century BC Greek world as in the medieval Islamic world, and he remains with us today in both medical and non-medical contexts.