Foundations of Healthcare Ethics Theory to Practice

Studying any discipline is worthwhile simply for the knowledge it brings and the skills in reasoning that can be learned and honed. For healthcare professionals, study – formal and informal – is part of the vocation: competence and excellence are not benchmarks to be achieved once in a lifetime and then relegated to the shelves, as one might a sporting trophy. Rather, the health professions demand a commitment to lifelong learning. Part of that professional commitment is an awareness of and engagement with the ethics of health and healthcare. The skills of this philosophical discipline are just as vital as clinical skills and the various dimensions of physiological and psychological knowledge that are essential for the work of a healthcare professional.

Why ethics?

Ethics has been an important sub-set of philosophy since the time of the ancient Greeks. For those early philosophers, there were three big questions to be answered by every human being and every society:

It is the third of these questions that is the core concern of this book.