1st Edition

An Ethics of Clinical Uncertainty Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Mary Ann G. Cutter Copyright 2024
136 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

136 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

136 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores the ethical implications of managing uncertainty in clinical decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. It develops an ethics of clinical uncertainty that brings together insights from the clinical and biomedical ethical literatures. The book sets out to recognize the central role uncertainty plays in clinical decision-making and to acknowledge the different levels, kinds,... Read more

1. Introduction

2. Decision-Making in Clinical Medicine

3. Clinical Uncertainty: Epistemological Roots

4. Clinical Uncertainty: Ontological and Axiological Roots 

5. A Taxonomy of Clinical Uncertainty

6. Managing Clinical Uncertainty 

7. Our Ethical Duty to Manage Clinical Uncertainty

8. Managing Moral Distress and Building Moral Resilience

9. Toward an Ethics of Clinical Uncertainty

Biography

Mary Ann G. Cutter is currently Professor of Biomedical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She joined the department in 1988 and holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Georgetown University through the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Program. She is the author of numerous publications in biomedical ethics, including The Ethics of Gender-Specific Disease (Routledge, 2012), Thinking through Breast Cancer: A Philosophical Exploration of Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival (2018), and Death: A Reader (2019).