The Patient in the Family

by Nelson,Hilde Lindemann

• ISBN13: 9780415911290
• ISBN10: 041591129X
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1995-04-14
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Medicine and families, two venerable institutions crucial to human well-being, are in crisis. The medical profession, struggling to control and equitably distribute care, finds itself compromised by its own success; families are shattered by divorce, violence and confusion about their own nature. What has gone unnoticed is the way these two powerful and pervasive spheres contribute to each other's loss of direction. The Patient in the Familydiagnoses the ways in which the worlds of home and hospital misunderstand each other. The authors explore how medicine, through its new reproductive technologies, is altering the structure of families, how families can participate more fully in medical decision-making, and how to understand the impact on families when medical advances extendlifebut notvitality. This book takes an unprecedented perspective on both institutions. Innovative and vivid, their stories tell the tales of families interacting withthe medical establishment.

Table of Contents

A Rivalry of Care

Why Families Matter

An Ethics for Families

Medical Decisionmaking

When I'm Sixty-Four

When Medicine Makes Babies

With Medicine and Justice for All

Mecicine, Families, and Other Sources of Identity

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.