Succeeding in the healthcare field means more than just making a diagnosis and writing a prescription. Healthcare professionals are responsible for convincing patients and their family members of the best course of action and treatments to follow, while knowing how to make the right moral and ethical choices, and so much more. Unlike daunting and expensive texts,Medical Ethics For Dummies offers an accessible and affordable course supplement for anyone studying medical or biomedical ethics.
    Follows typical medical and biomedical ethics courses
    Covers real ethical dilemmas doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers may face
    Includes moral issues surrounding stem cell research, genetic engineering, euthanasia, and more
Packed with helpful information,Medical Ethics For Dummies arms aspiring medical professionals with the philosophical and practical foundation for advancing in a field where critical ethical and moral decisions need to be rapidly and convincingly made.

Jane Runzheimer, MD, is a family physician who has served on the Ethics Committee of Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Linda Johnson Larsen has written 24 books, many of which have an emphasis on health, and has been a patient advocate for her husband and several family members.

Introduction 1

Part I: Medical Ethics, or Doing the Right Thing 7

Chapter 1: What Are Medical Ethics? 9

Chapter 2: Morality in Medicine 19

Chapter 3: The Provider-Patient Relationship 33

Chapter 4: Outside the Examining Room: Running an Ethical Practice 55

Chapter 5: Learning from Mistakes: Disclosing Medical Errors 73

Part II: A Patients Right to Request, Receive, and Refuse Care 93

Chapter 6: The Ethical Challenges in Distributing Basic Healthcare 95

Chapter 7: When Spirituality and Cultural Beliefs Affect Care 113

Chapter 8: Parental Guidance and Responsibilities 127

Part III: Ethics at the Beginning and End of Life 147

Chapter 9: Two Lives, One Patient: Pregnancy Rights and Issues 149

Chapter 10: When Science Supersedes Sex: Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy 171

Chapter 11: Walking a Fine Line: Examining the Ethics of Abortion 195

Chapter 12: Determining Death: Not an Event, but a Process 219

Chapter 13: Death with Dignity: The Right to Appropriate End-of-Life Care 233

Part IV: Advancing Medical Knowledge with Ethical Clinical Research 257

Chapter 14: Toward Trials without Error: The Evolution of Ethics in Clinical Research 259

Chapter 15: Beyond Guinea Pigs: Anatomy of an Ethical Clinical Trial 275

Chapter 16: Research in Special Populations 293

Chapter 17: Its All in the Genes: The Ethics of Stem Cell and Genetic Research 307

Part V: The Part of Tens 331

Chapter 18: Ten Ethical Issues to Address with Your Patients 333

Chapter 19: Ten High-Profi le Medical Ethics Cases 341

Chapter 20: Almost Ten Ethical Issues for the Future 349

Index 353