Ward Ethics: Dilemmas for Medical Students and Doctors in Training

Ward Ethics: Dilemmas for Medical Students and Doctors in Training Thomasine K. Kushner and David C. Thomasma, Editors Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-521-66452-7, 265 pp., paperback, $30.00

Those of us who have followed medical ethics for a decade or two probably accept the recent division into `Bioethics 1', covering for example the older issues of abortion and euthanasia, and `Bioethics 2'-pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, cloning, nanotechnology, etc. But there is a third category of health care ethics which particularly interests current and former clinicians like me-the ethics of everyday practice, the ethics of the clinical world, or, as the editors of this collection of cases and commentaries have termed them: `Ward ethics'.

Thomasine Kushner and David Thomasma are also co-editors of The Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics. They have compiled a series of more than 80 case studies from around the world and invited leading ethicists and clinicians to comment on them. They felt the need to do this after years of listening to medical students and trainee doctors and have, according to the blurb, produced 'an essential guide to coping with the ethical dilemmas of those embarking on their medical careers.

But have they? In the...