Complex Ethics Consultations : Cases that Haunt Us

This new edition offers detailed, compelling and engaging stories of haunting aspects of complex ethics consultations involving patients and their families. Exploring the emotional and humanistic aspects of the practice of clinical ethics, the cases are written in accessible and rich language appropriate for clinicians, bioethicists, and students.

Clinical ethics consultants navigate dilemmas across patient care, public health, healthcare policy, and professional guidelines with issues spanning from the beginning to the end of life, complex discharges, employment of novel technologies, and visitation restrictions. The second edition relays the narratives of fraught, complex consultations through richly detailed cases exploring the ethical reasoning, professional issues, and the emotional aspects of these impossibly difficult scenarios. Describing the affective aspects of ethics consultations, authors highlight the lasting effects of these cases on their practices and reflect candidly on evolving professional practice as well as contemporary concerns and innovations, with attention to equity and inclusivity. Featuring many new chapters, cases are grouped together by theme to aid teaching, discussion, and professional growth. The book is intended for clinicians, bioethicists, and ethics committee members with an interest in the choices made in real-life medical dilemmas as well as the emotional cost to those working to improve the situations.