It is this self-critical element that makes Scofield's pragmatism postmodern. Scofield, looking through the lens of his gloomy pragmatism, identified four features of rehabilitation that are illuminating for ethicists weaned on acute care ethics. Rehabilitation ethics is dominated by an educational model of informed consent. This model holds that respect for persons is often a more realistic goal than respect for patient autonomy. In respecting persons, we must work to restore patient autonomy and therefore, consent becomes an interactive and interpersonal process.
Rehabilitation generally takes a team approach to caregiving.
This integration of caregiving facilitates respect for the patient as he or she is not fragmented into diagnostic categories and treatment patterns based upon organ systems. Most of us will be disabled at some point. Thus, rehabilitation care raises important questions concerning the continuity of personal identity and invites us to revisit our cultural presuppositions about quality of life. Rehabilitation brings the political dimensions of healthcare to the fore. The current trend in healthcare financing is toward managed care schemes.