Death in the Clinic

by Lynn A. Jansen, David Barnard (Contributor), Celia Berdes (Contributor)

Despite the best efforts of medical ethicists over the past quarter century, the ethical challenges surrounding dying and death in the clinical setting remain largely unresolved, and little sustained attention has been paid to how thinking about death relates to and affects clinical practice. The reality is that people die, and that dying patients are not people for whom nothing can be done. Death in the Clinic provides medical students, residents, and educators a framework within which to explore and address this reality, while existential and philosophical questions about death will recommend the book to chaplains, social workers, palliative care clinicians, nurses, and clinical ethicists. Death in the Clinic fills a gap in contemporary medical education by explicitly addressing the concrete clinical realities about death with which practitioners, patients, and their families continue to wrestle.

172 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2005

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I am a healthcare researcher interested in clinical ethics, and a colleague who’s a palliative care specialist recommended I read one of the chapters in this book (“The Skull at the Banquet”) in order to do which I had to get the whole book (it’s small and short, and was not that expensive as medical books go) so I figured I’d read the whole thing as long as I have it. I’ve already learned a fair bit about end-of-life issues (controversies surrounding definitions of death, the palliative care movement, etc.) so a lot of this was review for me, but I think for a medical or nursing student or someone else new to the field, it would be a very nice, concise introduction. The two chapters that most interested me and in which I learned the most new things were the chapter arguing against a so-called “right to die” (the author of the chapter takes a position that feels fairly unique in the debate on this issue —he is not in principle opposed to all physician-assisted-suicide, but sees no way to create a legally protected “right” to it without bad consequences —so he made arguments that felt novel in the context of the usual sides of the debate and were very thought-provoking) and the chapter on how to ensure that cadavers are used ethically in medical training or research (of the issues touched on in this volume, I was previously least familiar with this one). As a note, I found the chapter that had been recommended to me un-compelling, partly because a large part of it focused on a particular sort of psychotherapy for use with dying patients that seems a bit suspect to me. But I think people actually interested specifically in going into palliative care medicine might find more to appreciate in that one. Again, overall a nice brief introduction to how clinicians deal with death.