Intensive Care Medical Ethics and the Medical Profession

From this superb fieldwork--observing medical staff on their rounds; interviewing staff, patients, and families; and systematically reviewing hospital records--Zussman reveals the existence of deep conflicts of opinion on how to allocate treatment and resources. He shows that these perspectives depart from the formal principles of medical ethics. He argues that courts and hospital administrators, with their new insistence on taking the rights of patients seriously, have reshaped the way life and death decisions are made. At the same time, Zussman examines doctors' frequent resistance to the precepts of medical ethics: doctors, he shows, often override patients' wishes, justifying their decisions in the name of the patients' best interests while maintaining control over the decision-making process.