The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession

Notre Dame Studies in Medical Ethics and Bioethics

By: Farr Curlin, Christopher Tollefsen

Narrated by: Scot Wilcox

Length: 9 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

What is medicine and what is it for? What does it mean to be a good doctor? The Way of Medicine articulates and defends an account of medicine and medical ethics meant to challenge the reigning provider of services model, in which clinicians eschew any claim to know what is good for a patient and instead offer an array of “health care services” for the sake of the patient’s subjective well-being. Against this trend, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen call for practitioners to recover what they call the Way of Medicine, which offers physicians both a path out of the provider of services model and also the moral resources necessary to resist the various political, institutional, and cultural forces that constantly push practitioners and patients into thinking of their relationship in terms of economic exchange.

Their investigation, drawing on the scholarship of Leon Kass, Alasdair MacIntyre, and John Finnis, leads them to explore the nature of medicine as a practice, health as the end of medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, the rule of double effect in medical practice, and a number of clinical ethical issues from the beginning of life to its end. The Way of Medicine is an intellectually serious yet accessible exploration of medical practice written for medical students, health-care professionals, and students and scholars of bioethics and medical ethics.

The book is published by University of Notre Dame Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

“A book that I wish I could put into the hands of all medical students and health care professionals.” (Christopher Kaczor, author of Disputes in Bioethics)

“A bold intervention into what has become commonplace in medicine: the physician as service provider, the physician as a mere cog in the wheel of social functioning.” (Jeffrey P. Bishop, author of The Anticipatory Corpse)

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