Ethical Dimensions in the Health Professions (third edition) by: Ruth Purtilo

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Price: $32.99 Manufacturer: W.B. Saunders Company Quantity: Add to a new shopping list

This book is the third edition of a text on medical ethics for the healthcare practitioner that includes many new approaches to medical ethics since the 1993 edition. It has a carefully structured approach that provides learning objectives, vocabulary, problems for consideration throughout the text, and cases relevant to the clinician. The purpose is to provide instructors with a text for teaching clinical ethics structured around the principles approach. The author lays out objectives, highlights relevant terminology, and provides relevant cases that exemplify medical ethics principles. This kind of text is much needed, for few texts both explain principles adequately and also give examples that are truly relevant. The book is written for the classroom and is useful to the instructor as well as the student. The author, who specializes in clinical and policy ethics, is also a physical therapist, making her understanding of the practical nature of clinical ethics very effective. The value of this book is that it is comprehensive -- the author gives a careful exposition of the principles approach to medical ethics and explores more contemporary treatments and considers contemporary problems, such as managed care. The principles approach is a must for the clinician since its vocabulary is used consistently throughout the care giving professions. This book reflects the author's experience at dealing with students in a variety of healthcare professions. She does a much better than job than most of addressing practical problems and of crossing the gulf between theory and practice. She suggests, in a subtle way, and as few other texts do, that some problems do not have simple or directsolutions, but she provides the opportunity for contemplating such problems nonetheless. The additions and expansions beyond the strict principles approach that have been made since the 1993 version make the new version worth the purchase.