Practical Decision Making in Health Care Ethics

For more than twenty years Practical Decision Making in Health Care Ethics has offered scholars and students a highly accessible and teachable alternative to the dominant principle-based theories in the field. Raymond J. Devettere’s approach is not based on an ethics of abstract obligations and duties but, following Aristotle, on how to live a fulfilled and happy life — in short, an ethics of personal well-being grounded in prudence, the virtue of ethical decision making. In this revised fourth edition, Devettere updates most chapters, adding new cases and sections on the following: neuroscience, social psychology, overriding advance directives, studies on the fetus, the palliative care movement, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, pharmacist and reproductive issues, prenatal life and abortion, neonatal testing and mandatory vaccinations, the US government’s STD research in Guatemala, the emergence of biobanks, facial transplantations, genetic testing, legal issues surrounding the Affordable Care Act, and more. Thoughtfully updated and renewed for a new generation readers, this classic textbook will be required reading for students and scholars of philosophy and medical ethics.

Author Biography

Raymond J. Devettere is a professor of philosophy at Emmanuel College where he directs the values-based education program and serves on the institutional review board. He taught health care ethics at Boston College for twenty-five years and is a member of the institutional review board at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.