Too often, discussions of ethical issues in health care and medicine are detached from the legal contexts which guide the practice of health care providers. In this book, Gary Jones and Joseph DeMarco aim to connect ethical theory, medicine, and the law, guiding readers toward a practical and legally-grounded understanding of the issues. While health care law is not always in the right, an understanding of laws and legal precedents, and of the reasoning behind them, can help us to participate in discussion of policy and to address current legal rights as well as complex ethical questions as they arise during health care provision. This book is uniquely up-to-date in its discussion of health care law, and unpacks the complex web of American policies, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, so as to make it intelligible to those without legal expertise. Bioethics in Context covers a wide range of topics, including: appropriate measures one should take to obtain informed consent and to protect patient privacy, dealing with patients who exhibit signs of mental illness, responding to sensitive cultural and religious concerns, and balancing the needs of medical researchers with those of patients participating in clinical trials. Useful case studies and examples are embedded throughout, and a companion website offers a thorough curated database of relevant legal precedents as well as additional case studies and other resources.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the many ethical and legal issues that arise in the practice of nursing. Ethical analysis is supplemented with the rigorous discussion of precedents from the American legal system as well as the requirements of professional codes operating at the national and state levels. Topics include informed consent, end-of-life treatment, impaired decisional capacity, privacy and confidentiality, and much more. KEY FEATURES An introduction to the ethical and legal issues that arise in nursing practice, designed especially for nursing students. Informed by expert knowledge of ethical theory, laws & codes, and nursing practice. Real-life legal cases and scenarios are discussed throughout as a means of illustrating the importance and complexity of the issues at hand. Summaries and discussion questions help the reader to understand and process the subject matter.

Bioethics: Legal and Clinical Case Studies is a case-based introduction to ethical issues in health care. Through seventy-eight compelling scenarios, the authors demonstrate the practical importance of ethics, showing how the concerns at issue bear on the lives of patients, health care providers, and others. A range of central topics are covered, including informed consent, medical futility, reproductive ethics, privacy, cultural competence, and clinical trials. Each chapter includes a selection of important legal cases as well as clinical case studies for critical analysis. The case studies are often presented as moral dilemmas, and are conducive to rich discussion. A companion website offers a curated collection of relevant legal precedents as well as additional case studies and other resources.