Care Ethics and Social Structures in Medicine
Routledge Annals of Bioethics Series

This book examines the central structures in medicine?medical knowledge, economics, technological innovation, and medical authority?from the perspective of an ethics of care. The author analyzes each of these structures in detail before considering the challenges they present to end of life care. The perspective of an ethics of care allows for a careful focus on how these structures affect the capacity of the health care system to provide the care patients need, on the impact they have on the relationships between patients and care-givers, and on how they affect the care-givers in terms of their own sense of identity and capacity for care. This bookoffers one of the first focused discussions of an ethics of care across a wide range of social issues and structures in contemporary medicine. It will be of keen interest to advanced students and scholars in bioethics and health care ethics who are interested in these important issues.

Introduction: Care and social structures

Chapter One: Care ethics and the practice of medicine

Chapter Two: Medical knowledge: From clinical judgement to evidence-based practice

Chapter Three: Public health and free markets

Chapter Four: Care and the technological imperative

Chapter Five: Authority and power in medicine

Chapter Six: Care, the ends of medicine, and the end of life.

Ruth E. Groenhout is the Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. She is the author of Connected Lives: Human Nature and an Ethics of Care (2004) and co-editor of Philosophy, Feminism, and Faith (2003).