Muslim Medical Ethics draws on the work of historians, health-care professionals, theologians, and social scientists to produce an interdisciplinary view of medical ethics in Muslim societies and of the impact of caring for Muslim patients in non-Muslim societies. Edited by Jonathan E. Brockopp and Thomas Eich, the volume challenges traditional presumptions of theory and practice to demonstrate the ways in which Muslims balance respect for their heritage with the health issues of a modern world.
Spiritual sickness troubles American medicine. Through a death-denying culture, medicine has gained enormous power-an influence it maintains by distancing itself from religion, which too often reminds us of our mortality. As a result of this separation of medicine and religion, patients facing serious illness infrequently receive adequate spiritual care, despite the large body of empirical data demonstrating its importance to patient decision-making, quality of life, and medical utilization. This secular-sacred divide also unleashes depersonalizing, social forces through the market, technology, and legal-bureaucratic powers that reduce clinicians to tiny cogs in an unstoppable machine. Hostility to Hospitality is one of the first books of its kind to explore these hostilities threatening medicine and offer a path forward for the partnership of modern medicine and spirituality. Drawing from interdisciplinary scholarship including empirical studies, interviews, history and sociology, theology, and public policy, the authors argue for structural pluralism as the key to changing hostility to hospitality.
Clinical ethics is a relatively new discipline within medicine, generated not so much by the Can we . . . ? questions of fact and prognosis that physicians usually address, but primarily by the more uncomfortable gray areas having to do with Should we . . . ? questions: / Should we use a feeding tube for Mom? / How should we deal with our baby about to be born with life-threatening anomalies? / Should our son be taken off dialysis, even though he ll die without it? / What should we do with our mentally ill sister, who has proven that she is untreatable? / In this book Robert Orr draws on his extensive medical knowledge and experience to offer a wealth of guidance regarding real-life dilemmas in clinical ethics. Replete with instructive case studies, Medical Ethics and the Faith Factor is an invaluable resource that reintroduces the human element to a discussion so often detached from the very people it claims to concern.
The past 25 years have witnessed an escalating discussion on the role of spirituality within health care. This scholarly volume is rooted in the belief that not only is religion integral to nursing care, but the religious beliefs of both nurse and patient can significantly influence care and its outcome. It offers an in-depth analysis of the ways in which religion influences the discipline of nursing, its practitioners, and treatment outcomes.
Medicine, ethics, and theology embrace various ideas and concepts regarding human suffering - ranging from pain, suffering from loneliness, a lack of meaning or finitude, to a religious understanding of suffering, grounded in a suffering and compassionate God. In the practices of clinical medical ethics and health care chaplaincy, these diverse concepts overlap. What kind of conflicts arise from different concepts in patient care and counseling, and how should they be dealt with in a reflective way? Fostering international interdisciplinary scientific conversations, the book aims to deepen the discussion in medical ethics concerning the understanding of suffering, and the caring and counseling of patients.
Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine provides a comprehensive evaluation of the relationship between spirituality, religion, and medicine evaluating current empirical research and academic scholarship. In Part 1, the book examines the relationship of religion, spirituality, and the practice of medicine by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the most recent empirical research of religion/spirituality within twelve distinct fields of medicine including pediatrics, psychiatry, internal medicine, surgery, palliative care, and medical ethics. Written by leading clinician researchers in their fields, contributors provide case examples and highlight best practices when engaging religion/spirituality within clinical practice. This is the first collection that assesses how the medical context interacts with patient spirituality recognizing crucial differences between contexts from obstetrics and family medicine, to nursing, to gerontology and the ICU. Recognizing the interdisciplinary aspects of spirituality, religion, and health, Part 2 of the book turns to academic scholarship outside the field of medicine to consider cultural dimensions that form clinical practice. Social-scientific, practical, and humanity fields include psychology, sociology, anthropology, law, history, philosophy, and theology. This is the first time in a single volume that readers can reflect on these multi-dimensional, complex issues with contributions from leading scholars. In Part III, the book concludes with a synthesis, identifying the best studies in the field of religion and health, ongoing weaknesses in research, and highlighting what can be confidently believed based on prior studies. The synthesis also considers relations between the empirical literature on religion and health and the theological and religious traditions, discussing places of convergence and tension, as well as remainingopen questions for further reflection and research. This book will provide trainees and clinicians with an introduction to the field of spirituality, religion, and medicine, and its multi-disciplinary approach will give researchers and scholars in the field a critical and up-to-date analysis.
Utilizing a form of medical ethnography to investigate a variety of pediatric contexts, Richard B. Miller tests the fit of different ethical approaches in various medical settings to arrive at a new paradigm for how best to care for children. Miller contends that the principle of beneficence must take priority over autonomy in the treatment of children. Yet doctors alone cannot decide what is best for the child. Determining and implementing such decisions, Miller argues, doctors must become part of a "therapeutic alliance" with families and the child undergoing medical care to arrive at the best course of treatment.Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine combines strong philosophical argumentation with firsthand knowledge of the issues facing children and families in pediatric care. This book will be an invaluable resource for medical ethicists and practitioners in pediatric care, as well as parents struggling with ethical issues in the care and treatment of their children.
Medicine, Ethics, Religion addresses three topics that inevitably will be confronted at some level in every human life. Academic understanding of all three fields provides background for entering the field of medicine. Understanding of Bioethics is part of every contemporary student’s higher education. The discipline is presented as an important background understanding of contemporary culture for students. This textbook is required reading for an entry-level course in bioethics or for an introductory philosophy course with a focus on medicine. It may also help readers to understand their own lives, adding e religious dimension to the practice of medicine. The doctor-patient relationship, an analysis of contemporary culture, the impact of technology on human life and the interfaces between medical practice, bioethics, and religion are core themes of this volume.
This collection of essays looks back at the contributions of theology to medical ethics in the past and sets an agenda for theological reflection on medical ethics in the future.
Where should physicians get their ethics? Professional codes such as the Hippocratic Oath claim moral authority for those in a particular field, yet according to medical ethicist Robert Veatch, these codes have little or nothing to do with how members of a guild should understand morality or make ethical decisions. While the Hippocratic Oath continues to be cited by a wide array of professional associations, scholars, and medical students, Veatch contends that the pledge is such an offensive code of ethics that it should be summarily excised from the profession. What, then, should serve as a basis for medical morality? Building on his recent contribution to the prestigious Gifford Lectures, Veatch challenges the presumption that professional groups have the authority to declare codes of ethics for their members. To the contrary, he contends that role-specific duties must be derived from ethical norms having their foundations outside the profession, in religious and secular convictions. Further, these ethical norms must be comprehensible to lay people and patients. Veatch argues that there are some moral norms shared by most human beings that reflect a common morality, and ultimately it is these generally agreed-upon religious and secular ways of knowing—thus far best exemplified by the 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights—that should underpin the morality of all patient-professional relations in the field of medicine. Hippocratic, Religious, and Secular Medical Ethics is the magnum opus of one of the most distinguished medical ethicists of his generation.
