The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession

The Way of Medicine is a book that explains why medicine is spiritually deflated and morally adrift and offers an ethical framework to renew and guide practitioners in fulfilling their profession to heal. It challenges the reigning provider of services model and calls for practitioners to recover the Way of Medicine, which offers physicians a path out of the model and the moral resources necessary to resist political, institutional, and cultural forces. The book explores the nature of medicine as a practice, health as the end of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, the rule of double effect, and clinical ethical issues from the beginning of life to its end. It is written for medical students, health care professionals, and students and scholars of bioethics and medical ethics.

Format: Hardback
Length: 232 pages
Publication date: 14 September 2021
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press

Medicine has lost its spiritual essence and moral compass, and this book seeks to explain why and provide an ethical framework for practitioners to revitalize their profession and fulfill their healing mission.

What is medicine, and what should be its ultimate goal? What qualities should a good doctor possess? These questions are fundamental to the practice of medicine and to understanding the moral principles that govern it.

The Way of Medicine presents and defends an alternative perspective on medicine and medical ethics. It challenges the prevailing provider of services model, where clinicians prioritize offering a range of "health care services" solely for the subjective well-being of patients. Instead, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen advocate for practitioners to reclaim the Way of Medicine, which provides a path away from this model and equips physicians with the moral resources to resist the various political, institutional, and cultural forces that perpetuate the notion of medicine as an economic exchange.

Curlin and Tollefsen offer a comprehensive and accessible account of the ancient ethical tradition that contemporary medicine and bioethics has strayed from. Their research, drawing on the scholarship of Leon Kass, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Finnis, delves into the nature of medicine as a practice, health as the ultimate objective of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, the rule of double effect in medical practice, and a range of clinical ethical dilemmas spanning from birth to death.

In the final chapter, the authors engage in discussions about conscience in medicine. They argue that rather than pretending to be ignorant of what is best for patients, practitioners should be transparent about their values and beliefs. They advocate for a more patient-centered approach, where the well-being of the individual is prioritized above all else.

The Way

Medicine has lost its spiritual essence and moral compass, and this book seeks to explain why and provide an ethical framework for practitioners to revitalize their profession and fulfill their healing mission.

What is medicine, and what should be its ultimate goal? What qualities should a good doctor possess? These questions are fundamental to the practice of medicine and to understanding the moral principles that govern it.

The Way of Medicine presents and defends an alternative perspective on medicine and medical ethics. It challenges the prevailing provider of services model, where clinicians prioritize offering a range of "health care services" solely for the subjective well-being of patients. Instead, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen advocate for practitioners to reclaim the Way of Medicine, which provides a path away from this model and equips physicians with the moral resources to resist the various political, institutional, and cultural forces that perpetuate the notion of medicine as an economic exchange.

Curlin and Tollefsen offer a comprehensive and accessible account of the ancient ethical tradition that contemporary medicine and bioethics has strayed from. Their research, drawing on the scholarship of Leon Kass, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Finnis, delves into the nature of medicine as a practice, health as the ultimate objective of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, the rule, of double effect in medical practice, and a range of clinical ethical dilemmas spanning from birth to death.

In the final chapter, the authors engage in discussions about conscience in medicine. They argue that rather than pretending to be ignorant of what is best for patients, practitioners should be transparent about their values and beliefs. They advocate for a more patient-centered approach, where the well-being of the individual is prioritized above all else.

Weight: 522g
Dimension: 159 x 237 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780268200855