Complex Ethics Consultations: Cases that Haunt Us
"This collection signals a new stage in the development of clinical ethics"BMJ"The editors and authors of this book give a nice snapshot of an evolving professional discipline. They illustrate all the ways in which ethics consultation is imperfect, tentative, and open to ongoing questioning and discussion. For most complex conundrums of clinical ethics, there is no right answer. Instead, the good consultant helps practitioners and patients to understand what is at stake if they choose one sort of resolution over another.The cases are presented concisely and give enough information for readers to make judgments about what ought to have been done. The editors even include a useful guide in which cases are organized by theme and suggestions for further  study are offered. These features, along with the quality of the case presentations and the personal nature of the reflections, make the book a useful tool for training members of hospital ethics committees. It will also be helpful to others who are interested in understanding the evolving practice of ethics consultation."--New England Journal of Medicine