Bioethics has long been accepted as an interdisciplinary field. The recent 'empirical turn' in bioethics is, however, creating challenges that move beyond those of simple interdisciplinary collaboration, as researchers grapple with the methodological, empirical and meta-ethical challenges of combining the normative and the empirical, as well as navigating the difficulties that can arise from attempts to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. Empirical Bioethics: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives brings together contributions from leading experts in the field which speak to these challenges, providing insight into how they can be understood and suggestions for how they might be overcome. Combining discussions of meta-ethical challenges, examples of different methodologies for integrating empirical and normative research, and reflection on the challenges of conducting and publishing such work, this book will both introduce the novice to the field and challenge the expert.

The Advances in Bioethics series is devoted to publishing collections of original papers and multi-authored volumes that advance the field of bioethics either by exploring new areas, or by taking new approaches to traditional areas. Although the series is published in English, its scope is international, and manuscripts are welcome from authors throughout the world. Advances in Bioethics is now available online at ScienceDirect full-text online of volumes 6 onwards. Elsevier book series on ScienceDirect gives multiple users throughout an institution simultaneous online access to an important compliment to primary research. Digital delivery ensures users reliable, 24-hour access to the latest peer-reviewed content. The Elsevier book series are compiled and written by the most highly regarded authors in their fields and are selected from across the globe using Elseviers extensive researcher network. For more information about the Elsevier Book Series on ScienceDirect Program, please visit: http://www.info.sciencedirect.com/bookseries/ *The volume adopts a more personal view of bioethics by examining the physician *Discusses character formation, ethics, professional character, and other concepts *Addresses the interpersonal aspects of physicians and the importance of character

Holm (Institute of Medicine, Law, and Bioethics, University of Manchester, UK) and Jonas (Center for Social Ethics and Policy, University of Manchester) gather papers representing the work performed as part of the Empirical Methods in Bioethics project sponsored by the European Commission, DG-Research. The papers are mainly concerned with investiga.

Psychiatry presents a unique array of difficult ethical questions. A major challenge is to approach psychiatry in a way that does justice to the real ethical issues. This book show how ethics can engage more closely with the reality of psychiatric practice and how empirical methodologies from the social sciences can help foster this link.

This is the first book in bioethics that explains how it is that you actually go about doing good bioethics. Bioethics has made a mistake about its methods, and this has led not only to too much theorizing, but also fragmentation within bioethics. The unhelpful disputes between those who think bioethics needs to be more philosophical, more sociological, more clinical, or more empirical, continue. While each of these claims will have some point, they obscure what should be common to all instances of bioethics. Moreover, they provide another phantom that can lead newcomers to bioethics down blind alleyways stalked by bristling sociologists and philosophers. The method common to all bioethics is bringing moral reason to bear upon ethical issues, and it is more accurate and productive to clarify what this involves than to stake out a methodological patch that shows why one discipline is the most important. This book develops an account of the nature of bioethics and then explains how a number of methodological spectres have obstructed bioethics becoming what it should. In the final part, it explains how moral reason can be brought to bear upon practical issues via an 'empirical, Socratic' approach.

​The goal of this open access book is to develop an approach to clinical health care ethics that is more accessible to, and usable by, health professionals than the now-dominant approaches that focus, for example, on the application of ethical principles. The book elaborates the view that health professionals have the emotional and intellectual resources to discuss and address ethical issues in clinical health care without needing to rely on the expertise of bioethicists. The early chapters review the history of bioethics and explain how academics from outside health care came to dominate the field of health care ethics, both in professional schools and in clinical health care. The middle chapters elaborate a series of concepts, drawn from philosophy and the social sciences, that set the stage for developing a framework that builds upon the individual moral experience of health professionals, that explains the discontinuities between the demands of bioethics and the experience and perceptions of health professionals, and that enables the articulation of a full theory of clinical ethics with clinicians themselves as the foundation. Against that background, the first of three chapters on professional education presents a general framework for teaching clinical ethics; the second discusses how to integrate ethics into formal health care curricula; and the third addresses the opportunities for teaching available in clinical settings. The final chapter, "Empowering Clinicians", brings together the various dimensions of the argument and anticipates potential questions about the framework developed in earlier chapters.

This book is a comprehensive, empirically-grounded exploration of the relationship between bioethics, culture, and the perspective of being affected. It provides a new outlook on how complex “bioethical” issues become questions of everyday life. The authors focus on two contexts, genetic testing and end-of-life care, to locate and demonstrate emerging themes of responsibility, such as self-responsibility, responsibility for kin, and the responsibility of society. Within these themes, the duty to know versus the right not to know one's genetic fate (in the context of genetic testing), or the sanctity of life versus self-determination (in the context of end of life care) are identified as culturally embedded dilemmas that are very much relevant for lay persons. Furthermore, cultural factors such as religion, history, utopian and dystopian views of biomedical technologies, outlooks on the body and on health/illness, and citizenship are examined. Health issues are increasingly becoming a question of assessing risk and responsibility: How can we better prepare ourselves for the future? We all make such assessments in a way that combines personal inclinations, professional recommendations, and cultural framings. There is still much to be learned about the interplay between these three dimensions.