Death in the Clinic

Despite the best efforts of medical ethicists over the past quarter century, the ethical challenges surrounding dying and death in the clinical setting remain largely unresolved, and little sustained attention has been paid to how thinking about death relates to and affects clinical practice. The reality is that people die, and that dying patients are not people for whom nothing can be done. Death in the Clinic provides medical students, residents, and educators a framework within which to explore and address this reality, while existential and philosophical questions about death will recommend the book to chaplains, social workers, palliative care clinicians, nurses, and clinical ethicists. Death in the Clinic fills a gap in contemporary medical education by explicitly addressing the concrete clinical realities about death with which practitioners, patients, and their families continue to wrestle.