About the book:
Health care practice and administration is fraught with complex moral issues and dilemmas. Shifting paradigms in the health care system, such as limited resources, increased emphasis on patients’ rights, and moral diversity, have profound and far-reaching ramifications that impact us all – health care recipients and their families, health care professionals and administrators, and other stakeholders.
On the one hand, advances in medical technology have created renewed hope and exciting horizons in our quest for cures and treatments of illnesses that cause pain, suffering and, frequently, premature death. On the other hand, the development of new investigative and treatment techniques have added complex and baffling ethical questions to old moral quandaries in health care.
Generally, health care professionals and administrators conscientiously follow personal or interdisciplinary frameworks for making decisions. These processes are enmeshed with a wealth of professional and personal experiences. Yet, how often is the health care professional or administrator baffled by difficult and perplexing circumstances that possess a value foundation. Commonly asked questions include: Which of these difficult alternatives should I choose? What course of action is most appropriate in this situation, and who should so decide? Answers to questions such as these often have very far-reaching ramifications, and they may on some occasions determine whether a patient is treated fairly or, indeed, whether he lives or dies.