Medical Ethics: A Reference Guide for Guaranteeing Principled Care and Quality

Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values to the practice of clinical medicine and in scientific research. Medical ethics allow for people, regardless of background, to be guaranteed quality and principled care. It is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. These values include the respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. These tenets allow doctors, care providers, and families to create a treatment plan and work towards the same common goal without any conflict.

Succeeding in the healthcare field means more than just making a diagnosis and writing a prescription. Healthcare professionals are responsible for convincing patients and their family members of the best course of action and treatments to follow, while knowing how to make the right moral and ethical choices. Ethical teaching should be an active part of training and should be taught in four division: basic ethics, clinical ethics, legal principles related to ethics and the ethics of research and affiliation. This book is a reference guide for physicians, healthcare providers and administrative staff. It looks at the ethical problems they face every day, gives the background and the ethical problem and then provides practical advice which can be easily implemented. This book provides the knowledge needed to understand who has the right to healthcare, the justice of clinical practice, what autonomy means for a patient giving consent, who is going to make any surrogate decisions and more.

Eldo E. Frezza, MD, MBA, FACS has been a board-certified physician for more than 20 years with 8 years of experience in health administration. He has a strong ability to improve financial, supply chain, quality and patient safety operations. He is a visible, hands-on leader with advisory expertise. He has a progressive understanding of flow and throughput with a reputation for establishing improvements and has a knowledge of utilization management.

He has served as Chief of Service and Chief of Surgery where he provided leadership and direction to successful transition from operating loss, to financial profit while drastically improving emergency and OR throughput. He also served as Director of Surgical Services for a private hospital where he assessed operations and established new metrics for OR; developed and implemented revised supply chain procedures for the OR to improve efficiency and achieve significant cost savings.

He has published books in Business and Ethics in healthcare including, The Business of Surgery, published by Cine-Med, copyright 2007; Professionalism & Ethics in a Surgical Practice published by Cine-Med, copyright 2008; and numerous articles. He received his medical degree Cum Laude from the University of Padua School of Medicine, Italy and his MBA in Health Organization management from Texas Tech Rawls School of Business, Lubbock, TX.