Ethics and Law for the Health Professions is a cross-disciplinary medico-legal book, the first edition of which was widely used in the medical world. We believe it is also of immense use to the legal world when grappling with medico-legal issues. Its special features are its focus on a clinically-relevant approach and its recognition that health care professionals are often confronted with legal and ethical issues simultaneously. Health professionals have to satisfy both, and their legal advisers need to be aware of the dilemmas this can present.

This book is careful to distinguish between ethics and law. Its chapters take account of all the health professions and their differing responsibilities, and the book covers a very wide range of the issues they face.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Introduction
CHAPTER 2: What is Ethics
CHAPTER 3: Ethical Theories and Concepts
CHAPTER 4: Relativism and Pluralism
CHAPTER 5: Introduction to Principle-Based Ethics
CHAPTER 6: Introduction to Law
CHAPTER 7: Clinical Ethics and Ethical Decision-Making
CHAPTER 8: The Student in the Health-Care Environment
CHAPTER 9: Professionalism and Standards of Care
CHAPTER 10: Professional Competence and the Issues of Negligence
CHAPTER 11: Veracity
CHAPTER 12: Assessing Competence
CHAPTER 13: Decision-Making for Non-Competent Adults and Children
CHAPTER 14: Consent
CHAPTER 15: Confidentiality and Record-Keeping
CHAPTER 16: Treatment and Non-Treatment Issues: The Limits of Medical Care
CHAPTER 17: CPR and No-CPR orders
CHAPTER 18: Nursing
CHAPTER 19: The Elderly
CHAPTER 20: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health
CHAPTER 21: People with Mental Illness
CHAPTER 22: Euthanasia
CHAPTER 23: Post-Coma Unresponsiveness (Vegetative State) and Brainstem Death
CHAPTER 24: Organ Donation and Transplantation
CHAPTER 25: Genetics
CHAPTER 26: Abortion
CHAPTER 27: Assisted Reproductive Technology
CHAPTER 28: Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)
CHAPTER 29: Biomedical Research
CHAPTER 30: Resource Allocation and Health Policy
CHAPTER 31: Public Health, HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases
CHAPTER 32: The Pharmaceutical Industry

"This is the second edition of a most useful book and I highly recommend it to all lawyers and those who work in the medical field. I commend the authors for their success in treating a large number of emotive topics with sensitivity, understanding and objectivity.

By using practical examples they have demonstrated the view points of the various professionals, including nurses, doctors, lawyers etc, who might be called on to provide advice on whether life support should be turned off, whether the wishes of the patient not to be resuscitated should be obeyed, whether a blood transfusion should be given to a person whose religious beliefs prohibit it and a large number of other legal, ethical and moral dilemmas that may be faced by health professionals."

-- BJM, Law Society Tasmania Newsletter