The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing

by Lori Arviso

Review from Publisher’s Weekly:  When Alvord, who is half Navajo, dissected her first cadaver, she broke an important rule in her culture: "Navajos do not touch the dead. Ever." In the process of becoming a "white man's doctor," Alvord discovered that among the indigenous customs her medical training forced her to ignore were valuable healing practices that are sorely needed in allopathic medicine. In this inspiring memoir, Alvord, assisted by Van Pelt, describes her endeavors to integrate a Navaho approach to healing with high-tech medical procedures. 

First Do No Harm

by Lisa Belkin

Review from Amazon.com: A look at medical ethics and the critical-care decisions made by the ethics committee, doctors, and four sets of patients/parents at Hermann Hospital in Texas between May-October 1988. Quality of life is measured against longevity and consideration is given to expenditure of limited resources. As most of these patients were children or young adults, the book has immediacy for high school students. The epilogue, written four years later, brings closure to decisions made. Young people interested in medicine or the health-care crisis are sure to find this involving.
- Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VA

Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure

by Charles Bosk

Amazon.com book description: On its initial publication, Forgive and Remember emerged as the definitive study of the training and lives of young surgeons. Now with an extensive new preface, epilogue, and appendix by the author, reflecting on the changes that have taken place since the book's original publication, this updated second edition of Charles L. Bosk's classic study is as timely as ever.

Stories of Sickness

by Howard Brody

Review from Amazon.com: Text explores the dimensions of what illness means to suffers and those around them. Contains a philosophical exploration incorporating approaches from literature and medical social sciences. Topics include narrative ethics and how they are carried out. For healthcare professionals and students.

Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics

by Rita Charon

Review from Amazon.com: You will search medical textbooks in vain for the differential diagnosis distinguishing modern illness from postmodern illness. But if this dichotomy and the evolution of the former condition into the latter were established, the project of narrative ethics would follow logically. According to David Morris, a contributor to Stories Matter, the modern perspective is "biomedical": we are our genes, our organs, our laboratory measurements. The postmodern perspective is "biocultural": we are made of stories -- cultural, familial, interpersonal, psychological, emotional, and biologic narratives. "Reading" these stories from the perspective of the main characters is the job of physicians and medical ethicists. Narrative ethicists embrace a modified postmodernism, in which narratives do not constitute persons but rather provide the best access to them. 

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society

by Eileen Daniel

Book Description from Amazon.com: This seventh edition of TAKING SIDES: HEALTH AND SOCIETY presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript.

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Professional Communications in Eye Care

by Ellen Richter Ettinger

Book Description from Amazon.com: A must-have reference to develop effective communication skills to optimize the delivery of clinical care. Specific strategies for interaction are discussed and illustrated in clinical case studies.

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights & the New War on the Poor

by Paul Farmer, MD

Review from Amazon.com:

Pathologies of Power is a jeremiad on how the "structural violence" of denied opportunities, economic deprivation, violent despots (and the powers supporting them), and international financial organizations harm the health of billions of people who are so distant that they are glibly and uncomprehendingly referred to as living in a "third world." Farmer builds from the 19th century's Rudolph Virchow, who argued that physicians must advance public health through political and social reform as "attorneys for the poor." Farmer's anecdotes about mobilizing the poor on their own behalf echo the work of Norman Bethune. And Farmer extends Jonathan Mann's fusion of human rights and medical ethics to health and human rights. 

Drawing the Line: Life, Death and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital

by Samuel Gorovitz

The Lives to Come

by Philip Kitcher

Review from Amazon.com:

We stand at the edge, it seems, of a biotechnology revolution that may change society as fundamentally as has the information age. Philip Kitcher's The Lives to Come explains what biotechnology holds in store and grapples with the seemingly intractable moral and ethical questions that it raises: When should genetic screening be applied? When is abortion based on genetic information permissible? How should individuals' genetic makeup factor into their insurance eligibility? 

Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Bioethical Issues

by Carol Levine

Book Description from Amazon.com: This debate-style reader is designed to introduce students to controversies in bioethical issues through readings that reflect a variety of viewpoints. Each issue is framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript.

Stories and Their Limits: Narrative Approaches to Bioethics

by Hilde Nelson

Review from Amazon.com: Stories and Their Limits should be required reading not only for those working in the field of bioethics, but for anyone concerned with ethics in its philosophical or theological mode.

Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine

Randolph M. Nesse & George C. Williams

Review from Amazon.com: Is our tendency to "fix" our bodies with medicine keeping them from working exactly as they're supposed to? Two pioneers of the emerging science of Darwinian medicine argue that illness is part and parcel of the evolutionary system and as such, may be helping us to evolve towards better adaptation to our environment.

Your Doctor is Not In

by J. Orient

Review from Amazon.com: The current debate over health care reform has created a brisk market for information, and Orient, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, here weighs in with the conservatives on health care reform, arguing that "a free market would bring the best possible medical care to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible cost." The book makes the case for freedom of enterprise and inquiry in medicine--a system under which the "heart of medicine is the relationship of one doctor to one patient." Whether or not you agree that health care is a privilege and not a right, and that the proposed changes will mean less freedom, this thought-provoking defense of private medicine should be read by all interested in the health care dialogue.

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Dental Ethics at Chairside

by David Ozar & David Sokol

Written for professional ethics courses in dental schools, this book is designed to show dental students and practitioners how to approach patient relationships.

Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases that have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Background

by Gregory E. Pence

Book Description from Amazon.com: Offers a collection of major cases defining and shaping the field of medical ethics. Includes new material on research in embryo research, stem cells, and reproductive cloning. Also discusses paid organ donation, international bioethics, and costs of prescription drugs for the elderly.

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Health Professional and Patient Interaction

by Ruth B. Purtilo & Amy Haddad

Book Description from Amazon.com: Revised and updated, the sixth edition of this comprehensive resource focuses on respectful interactions in a health care setting. Emphasizing effective communication with clients and patients, examples and scenarios are specifically relevant to health professionals. Content includes information and strategies for patients of all ages -- as well as abusive, depressed, and impaired patients.

Death and Dignity

by Timothy E. Quill

Review from Amazon.com: A University of Rochester professor of medicine and psychiatry and former medical director of a hospice, Quill contends that the care of people with terminal illnesses is among the "highest callings" of physicians. But, he argues, medical institutions as well as the legal system wrongly limit the choices available to such patients. Unsentimentally relating stories from his own practice and those of colleagues, Quill explains the various options afforded by living wills, health care proxies and "comfort care" (treatment limited to alleviating patient suffering). While he avers that "I would be willing to fight substantial medical battles to continue living," Quill defines certain circumstances under which a rational patient should have the right to choose death and to enlist the aid of a physician to ensure "death with dignity." Quill's perceptive, empathetic exploration will help readers to make informed decisions in tragic situations.