Contents -- Preface -- Introduction. The Nature and Functioning of Ethics Committees -- I: CURRICULUM FOR ETHICS COMMITTEES -- 1. Ethical Foundations of Clinical Practice -- The Role of Ethics in Clinical Medicine -- Ethics Committees in the Health Care Setting -- Fundamental Ethical Principles -- The Role of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity in Health Care -- Conflicting Obligations and Ethical Dilemmas -- 2. Decision Making and Decisional Capacity in Adults -- Health Care Decisions and Decision Making -- Decision-making Capacity -- Assessment and Determination of Capacity -- Deciding for Patients without Capacity -- 3. Informed Consent and Refusal -- Evolution of the Doctrine of Informed Consent -- Elements of Informed Consent and Refusal -- The Nature of Informed Consent -- Exceptions to the Consent Requirement -- 4. Truth Telling: Disclosure and Confidentiality -- Justifications -- Disclosure -- Disclosure of Adverse Outcomes and Medical Error -- Confidentiality -- 5. Special Decision-making Concerns of Minors -- Decisional Capacity and Minors -- Consent for Minors -- Confidentiality and Disclosure -- Special Problems of the Adolescent Alone -- 6. End-of-life Issues -- Decision Making at the End of Life -- Defining Death -- Advance Health Care Planning -- Goals of Care at the End of Life -- Forgoing Life-sustaining Treatment -- Protecting Patients from Treatment -- Rejection of Recommended Treatment and Requests to ''Do Everything'' -- Medical Futility -- 7. Palliation -- From Caring to Curing and Back Again -- The Experience of and Response to Pain -- The Moral Imperative to Relieve Pain -- Physician-assisted Suicide -- 8. Justice, Access to Care, and Organizational Ethics -- Access to Health Care in the United States -- A Right to Health Care? -- Theories of Justice -- Rationing -- Health Care Organizational Ethics.

II: CLINICAL ETHICS CONSULTATION -- 9. Approaches to Ethics Consultation -- Three Models of Ethics Consultation -- Critical Success Factors for Ethics Consultation Services -- Policy -- Two Approaches to Clinical Ethics Consultation -- 10. Sample Clinical Cases -- Advance Directives -- Autonomy in Tension with Best Interest -- Confidentiality -- Decisional Capacity -- Disclosure and Truth Telling -- End-of-life Care -- Forgoing Life-sustaining Treatment -- Goals of Care -- Informed Consent and Refusal -- Medical Futility -- Parental Decision Making -- Surrogate Decision Making -- III: WHITE PAPERS, MEMORANDA, GUIDELINES, AND PROTOCOLS -- Allocating Critical Care Resources: Keeping the Teeth in ICU Triage -- Justice and Access to Unreimbursed Therapies -- Guidelines for Transferring Patients between Services -- Decision-making Protocol for the Patient Alone -- IV: SAMPLE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES -- Access to Bioethics Consultation -- Advance Directives -- Determination of Brain Death -- Do-not-intubate (DNI) Orders -- Do-not-resuscitate (DNR) Orders -- Forgoing Life-extending Treatment -- V: INSTITUTIONAL CODE OF ETHICS -- VI: KEY LEGAL CASES IN BIOETHICS -- Informed Consent -- Health Care Decision Making -- State Action to Protect Public Health -- Confidentiality -- Medical Decision Making for Minors -- Reproductive Rights -- Health Care Reimbursement -- VII: AN ETHICS COMMITTEE MEETING -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.