Books in the The International Library of Bioethics series

This book provides a perspective on the concepts placebo and placebo effects, which has been missing so far: a detailed analysis of the history of the terms, their current use, suggested alternatives and the implications of the conceptual confusion.

This book engages in a critical discussion on how to respect and promote patients' autonomy in difficult cases such as palliative care and end-of-life decisions.

This book brings together an international collection of experts in reproductive ethics, law, disability studies, and medicine to explore the challenging future of reproduction and children.

This book offers a unique description of how phenomenology can help professionals from medical, environmental and social fields to explore notions such as interaffectivity, empathy, epoche, reduction, and intersubjective encounter.

This book assists health care providers to understand the specific interplay of the roles and relationships currently forming the debates in pediatric clinical ethics. The book first focuses on setting the stage by introducing a theoretical framework and elaborating how pediatric ethics differ from non-pediatric ethics.

This book provides a bridge between the theory to practice gap in contemporary health care ethics. It explores the messiness of everyday ethical issues and validates the potential impacts on health care professionals as wounded healers who regularly experience close proximity to suffering and pain.

This handbook provides tools for nurse educators, ethics educators, practicing nurses and allied health professionals for developing confidence and skill in ethical decision making in interdisciplinary settings such as acute and chronic care hospitals and clinics. It is useful for all healthcare personnel who face ethical issues in the course of their work and who work with nurses to resolve these issues. While the content is based on a US context, the concerns of nurses internationally are discussed and emphasized. Nurses working in acute and chronic care settings face many obstacles to providing good care and are often the first line of defense related to patient safety and meeting the needs of patients and their families. Some of the obstacles to optimal patient care are institutional, some sociocultural, and others the result of inadequate communication.  Evidence points to the idea that while nurses do have the knowledge and skills to address practice problems of various sorts, they may not be confident in their skills of ethical decision making and advocacy actions. This is a resource to develop moral agency on behalf of individuals and to address broader barriers to good care raised at the local, community, or social levels.