Making Sense of Advance Directives (Clinical Medical Ethics) - Hardcover

Nancy M.P. King

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792311639 ISBN 13: 9780792311638

Publisher: Springer Netherlands, 1991

Synopsis

This is a handbook of ethics for a diverse audience of health care providers. Its subject is the moral and legal force of `advance directives', which are documents intended to declare and preserve the values, choices, and preferences of patients in the event that they become unable to make decisions about their own health care. The posture of the work is one of strong support for patients' individual health care choices, and encouragement of thoughtful use of advance directives to that end. The work presents a historical and conceptual examination of the patient's role in medical decision making and the refusal of treatment, with special attention to the problems of advance decision making. It examines the types and models of advance directives currently in common use and gives suggestions both about helping patients to write directives and about interpreting and making use of directives prepared by patients and encountered by clinicians. Finally, the implications of the suggested policy are examined in light of growing concerns about the scarcity of funds and resources for health care.

About this title

About the Author:

Nancy M.P. King is a lawyer and an professor in the Department of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Review:

' Making Sense of Advance Directives is the best single book on this timely topic. It should be not only in the collections of academic libraries, but also in those of community and hospital libraries and in the reading rooms of ethics committees and clinical departments. ' Medical Humanities Review 6:2 1992

About this edition

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0792311639
• ISBN 13: 9780792311638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232