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I’m writing to announce my new book, Rethinking Health Care Ethics, published this past summer by Palgrave Macmillan (with endorsements by Daniel Callahan, Arthur Kleinman, and Allan Brandt; see pp. v-vi). My co-author (Kasia Kozlowska, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Sydney) and I have made the book available open access in order reach a broad audience of health professionals, students/trainees, academics, and other researchers, in addition to bioethicists. In the book, we present a psychologically grounded approach to clinical ethics that is oriented specifically toward learning and teaching. This approach would likely be of interest both in teaching ethics and in ethics consultation, and researchers have also expressed strong interest in relation to working at the edges of what is known. Given that we see health professionals as having the capacity, via discussions with colleagues, to think through and settle most day-to-day ethical challenges—without the need to rely on bioethicists as such—the book’s approach might be especially useful in low-resource settings. Eight months after publication, responses to the book from clinicians and researchers have been consistently enthusiastic.
The book is perhaps distinctive in writing about, and supporting, the co-equal moral voices of all health professionals. With that end in view, our “readers” (of drafts in preparation) included a hospital-based psychiatrist, a psychiatrist working with indigenous populations, a nurse, a social worker/health policy specialist, a physician/evidence-based researcher, and a medical historian. We believe that this range of feedback provides the book with an uncommon intellectual reach and sensitivity to diverse professionals and professional contexts.
Here is a link to the free download: https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9789811308291
The book is also available as an inexpensive hardback (free shipping) via the same link.
We hope you will take a look at the book, and if you like what you see, please send the link around to your colleagues and students, including through any networks or listservs. We think that the book can and should start a conversation about how best to teach clinical ethics to trainees and clinicians in the health professions and in health research.
Feel free to contact me at sscher@mclean.harvard.edu