The Goals of Medicine
eBook - PDF

The Goals of Medicine

The Forgotten Issues in Health Care Reform

  1. 256 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Goals of Medicine

The Forgotten Issues in Health Care Reform

About this book

Debates over health care have focused for so long on economics that the proper goals for medicine seem to be taken for granted; yet problems in health care stem as much from a lack of agreement about the goals and priorities of medicine as from the way systems function. This book asks basic questions about the purposes and ends of medicine and shows that the answers have practical implications for future health care delivery, medical research, and the education of medical students.

The Hastings Center coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, public health experts, philosophers, theologians, politicians, health care administrators, social workers, and lawyers in fourteen countries to explore these issues. In this volume, they articulate four basic goals of medicine — prevention of disease, relief of suffering, care of the ill, and avoidance of premature death — and examine them in light of the cultural, political, and economic pressures under which medicine functions. In reporting these findings, the contributors touch on a wide range of diverse issues such as genetic technology, Chinese medicine, care of the elderly, and prevention and public health.

The Goals of Medicine clearly demonstrates the importance of clarifying the purposes of medicine before attempting to change the economic and organizational systems. It warns that without such examination, any reform efforts may be fruitless.

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Yes, you can access The Goals of Medicine by Mark J. Hanson, Daniel Callahan, Mark J. Hanson,Daniel Callahan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & Ethics in Medicine. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Contents
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction
  5. PROJECT REPORT: The Goals of Medicine: Setting New Priorities
  6. The Goals and Ends of Medicine: How Are They to be Defined?
  7. On Medicine and Other Means of Health Enhancement: Towards a Conceptual Framework
  8. What Kind of Values? A Historical Perspective on the Ends of Medicine
  9. Pain, Suffering, and the Goals of Medicine
  10. Symptoms or Persons? A Question for Setting the Goals of Medicine
  11. The Idea of Progress and the Goals of Medicine
  12. Old Age: Something to Look Forward To?
  13. Genetic Medicine: A New Copernican Turning Point?
  14. The Goals of Medicine and Public Health
  15. Rethinking Doctor Think: Reforming Medical Education by Nurturing Neglected Goals
  16. Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Goals of Medicine
  17. The Future of Medicine: An Analytic Framework
  18. On the Goals of Medicine: Reflections and Distinctions
  19. Negotiating the Goals of Medicine
  20. Contributors
  21. Index