Ethical and Legal Issues in Modern Surgery

Over the last quarter of a century, the fields of medical ethics and of legal issues related to medical practice have rapidly developed for a number of reasons. Firstly, the provision of healthcare nowadays is based on a complicated partnership between healthcare providers, patients, administrators and organizations responsible for providing finance; this complicated partnership frequently results in clashes of views, opinions, and priorities, which have a major ethical and legal dimension. Secondly, a major event of the 21st century is the development of multicultural societies; healthcare-related decisions thus have to be made on the background of so many different ethnicities, religions, cultures and languages, resulting in a great spectrum of ethical and legal implications. Thirdly, in the modern world, people are more mobile and can easily and cost-effectively seek treatment outside of their country of origin or residence, which raises many ethical and legal issues. Lastly, the development of new medical specialties, modern and advanced treatments for very challenging patients, and the introduction of new technologies in medical practice have dramatically broadened the spectrum of ethical and legal issues related to medical practice. This book will therefore aim to cover in detail general principles and specific issues related to the ethical and legal dimensions of modern surgical practice.

Contents:

• General:

  • Ethical Issues in Surgery: The Patient's Perspective (Amanda Venters)
  • Consent for Clinical Interventions and Medical Research (Miran Epstein)
  • Ethical Issues in Medical Confidentiality and Privacy (Philip Hébert)
  • Resource Allocation in Healthcare (Ariel Zosmer)
  • Ethical and Legal Issues in Clinical Research (Andrew J T George)
  • Medical Negligence and Malpractice (Bernard M Dickens)
  • Surgical Training (S R Patel, P Chadha and N Hakim)
  • Great Expectations: Towards a Greater Understanding of Ethics in Policing by Exploring Practices in the Medical Profession (Allyson MacVean)

• Specialist Practice:

  • Ethical and Legal Issues in Anaesthetics (Jeremy Campbell and Felicity Plaat)
  • Neurosurgery: Ethical and Legal Issues (Howard Morgan, Louis Whitworth, Christopher Madden and Duke Samson)
  • Ethical and Legal Issues in Modern Cardiothoracic Surgery (Kamran Baig and Jon Anderson)
  • Obstetrics and Gynaecological Surgery: The Ethics and Law of Abortion and Sterilisation (Ariel Zosmer)
  • Ethical Issues in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Ivo Pitanguy, Henrique Radwanski and Aris Sterodimas)
  • Ethical Issues in Transplantation (Miran Epstein)
  • Ethical and Legal Issues in Composite Tissue Allograft (Face, Arm, and Uterus) and Microsurgery (Richard Huxtable and Alice Guilder)
  • Ethical and Legal Issues in Trauma Medicine (Rebecca C H Brown)

Readership: Ethicists, lawyers, clinicians, academics and general public.
Key Features:

• Specifically addresses ethical and legal issues in surgical practice
• Deals with the implications in a particularly interesting manner
• Chapters written by well-known academics with extensive and well-respected expertise in the field of medical ethics or medical legal issues and by internationally renowned academic surgeons who have combined expertise in the specific field with special interest in medical ethics and medical legal issues