Overview

Debating Health Care Ethics, Third Edition explores contemporary moral challenges in health care through a unique debate format, providing students with the essential tools to understand and critically evaluate the leading arguments in the field and to develop their own arguments on important moral problems in health care. The first three chapters explore the nature of arguments, philosophical methodology, and a range of leading normative ethical theories. The remaining chapters introduce students to moral problems in health care through dramas that feature complex scenarios involving patients, family members, and health care providers. Each drama is followed by a lively debate where the authors consider and evaluate rival arguments concerning the moral issues raised by the drama. The dramas encourage students to start thinking about ethical issues in health care. The debates then demonstrate how arguments are developed and criticized. These debates also encourage students to develop and defend their own arguments on these topics. This technique is more interactive and approachable than standard philosophical texts.This third edition contains updated chapters and dramas that reflect recent changes in health care in Canada. One such change is to the chapter on euthanasia, which now includes a drama and a debate centred on the morality of legalizing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Other changes to the text are in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. These include updated chapters on the proper rules for prioritizing care in emergency situations (triage) and the moral limits of medical doctors' administering unproven, alternative medications to patients who request them. The third edition also contains a drama and debate on autonomy and valid consent, and a drama and updated debate on the justice of a two-tier health care system, where one level of health care is available to all regardless of means, and another level of faster health care is available only to those with means.

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9781773384603

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Reviews

The use of dialogue provides an effective model of how to engage in civil discourse on controversial topics about which reasonable people might disagree. It is unique in its inclusion of a chapter on philosophical arguments and method in addition to the more standard chapter on moral theory. These two aspects make this textbook an accessible resource for students of health care ethics who are new to philosophy."" - Meredith Schwartz, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Ryerson University""I have been using Debating Health Care Ethics ever since it was first published in late 2009. In it, Smolkin, Bourgeois and Findler tackle a wide range of complex issues in a manner that is at once unique and sophisticated. Its extensive Canadian content makes this book essential for students planning to work in the health care system of this country, and an excellent choice for instructors tasked with preparing them. Written in a way that effectively mimics the Socratic method of debate, readers are quickly drawn in a symphony of dialogue between the three authors. If the essence of philosophy can ever be captured in a movie script, this is the way to do it."" - Mazen M. Guirguis, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Author Information

Doran Smolkin is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, who specializes in teaching ethics. Warren Bourgeois is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Philosophy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, who has also taught at the University of Salzburg, Austria; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of British Columbia. Patrick Findler is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, who teaches ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of sport.

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