This text/reader performs two tasks: First, it provides a sound, comprehensive introduction to the field of conventional Western medical ethics; second, it introduces readers to cross-cultural perspectives related to these or similar issues.

In the wake of massive technological innovation and increased patient diversity, the most daunting challenges facing the healthcare industry is the provision of medical care within the medley of ethical diversity. The codes of ethics guiding institutions are unique, but the bottom line of each one of them is to reduce, if not eliminate, harm to mankind. In Dr. Musahs Ethical Diversity in Healthcare Delivery, he presents ethical approaches by several institutions, including community healthcare organizations, colleges, international agencies, and religious medical ethics. He finally presents a list of informed consent negligence and malpractice lawsuits facing the healthcare organization in clinical practice and provides guidelines for healthcare providers to evaluate their practices effectively.

Organized around the four central themes of healthcare ethics (theoretical foundations and issues for individuals, organizations, and society), Health Care Ethics, Fourth Edition brings together the insights of a diverse panel of leading experts in the fields of bioethics, long-term care, and health administration, among others. Students will build on this critical platform to develop an extensive toolbox of analytical and problem-solving skills. The fully revised and updated Fourth Edition addresses current changes in health care, including three new chapters covering ethical issues related to Health Information Management, Patient Safety, and Epidemics. All other chapters have been updated to reflect the most recent developments in medical technology and new challenges faced by health care professionals in the era of the ACA.The fully revised and updated Fourth Edition addresses current changes in health care, including three new chapters covering ethical issues related to Health I

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

The goals of healthcare and health policy, and the health-related dilemmas facing policy makers, professionals, and citizens are extensively analysed and debated in a range of disciplines including public health, sociology, and applied philosophy. Health and the Good Society is the first full-length work that addresses these debates in a way that cuts across these disciplinary boundaries. Alan Cribb's core argument is that clinical ethics needs to be understood in the context of public health ethics. This entails healthcare ethics embracing 'the social dimension' of health in two overlapping senses: first, the various respects in which health experiences and outcomes are socially determined; and second, the ways in which health-related goods are better understood as social rather then purely individual goods. This broader approach to the Cthics of healthcare includes a concern with the social construction of both healthcare goods and the roles, ideals, and obligations of agents; that is to say it focuses upon the 'value field' of health-related action and not only upon the ethics of action within this value field. This groundbreaking book thus seeks to 'open up' the agenda of healthcare ethics both methodologically and substantively: it argues that population-oriented perspectives are central to all healthcare ethics, and that everybody has some share of responsibility for securing health-related goods including the good of greater health equality. One of its major conclusions is that the rather limited tradition of health education policy and practice needs a complete re-think.

This is a lucid, readable discussion of ethical questions in health care as they arise on the business or organizational level: an effort to spell out an ethical perspective for healthcare organizations. It will be of use to students in health services management programs, health care professionals, healthcare administrators, and members of healthcare ethics committees. Hall begins with the ethical analysis of decision-making in the management of healthcare organizations and then addresses some of the questions of organizational ethics through an analysis of corporate social responsibility in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and of the problem of uncompensated care. Later chapters take up patient development, community relations, diversity, employee relations, governmental relations, regulatory compliance and medical records. The author's analysis focuses on healthcare institutions as business organizations with many of the problems faced by corporate management in other fields but with the difference that health care holds a special place among human needs and has traditionally been viewed from an altruistic perspective. He gives special attention to the new standards on organizational ethics promulgated by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and includes many case studies not only to illustrate the main points but also to direct the reader's attention to peripheral aspects that can complicate theses issues.

Healthcare in the U.S. faces two interpenetrating certainties. First, with over 66 racial and ethnic groupings, our “American Mosaic” of worldviews and values unavoidably generates clashes in hospitals and clinics. Second, our public increasingly mistrusts our healthcare system and delivery. One certainty fuels the other. Conflicts in the clinical encounter, particularly with patients from other cultures, often challenge dominant assumptions of morally appropriate principles and behavior. In turn, lack of understanding, misinterpretation, stereotyping, and outright discrimination result in poor health outcomes, compounding further mistrust. To address these cultural fault lines, healthcare institutions have initiated efforts to ensure “cultural competence.” Yet, these efforts become institutional window-dressing without tackling deeper issues, issues having to do with attitudes, understanding, and, most importantly, ways we communicate with patients. These deeper issues reflect a fundamental, original fault line: the ever-widening gap between serving our own interests while disregarding the concerns of more vulnerable patients, those on the margins, those Others who remain disenfranchised because they are Other. This book examines this and how we must become the voice for these Others whose vulnerability and suffering are palpable. The author argues that, as a vital and necessary condition for cultural competency, we must learn to cultivate the virtue of Presence - of genuinely being there with our patients. Cultural competency is less a matter of acquiring knowledge of other cultures. Cultural competency demands as a prerequisite for all patients, not just for those who seem different, genuine embodied Presence. Genuine, interpersonal, embodied presence is especially crucial in our screen-centric and Facebook world where interaction is mediated through technologies rather than through authentic face-to-face engagement. This is sadly apparent in healthcare, where we have replaced interpersonal care with technological intervention. Indeed, we are all potential patients. When we become ill, we too will most likely assume roles of vulnerability. We too may feel as invisible as those on the margins. These are not armchair reflections. Brannigan’s incisive analysis comes from his scholarship in healthcare and intercultural ethics, along with his longstanding clinical experience in numerous healthcare settings with patients, their families, and healthcare professionals.