The contributions of sociology to medical ethics

Hasting Center Report

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 7-11

  Zussman, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; BIOETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; ETHICIST; ETHICS; INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMUNICATION; MEDICAL ETHICS; PHILOSOPHY; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; SOCIOLOGY;

BIOETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS;

BIOETHICAL ISSUES; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; ETHICAL ANALYSIS; ETHICISTS; ETHICS, MEDICAL; INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMUNICATION; PHILOSOPHY; RESOURCE ALLOCATION; SOCIOLOGY;

EID: 0033631561     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3527988     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. The most prominent of these reports is in R. Fox, The Sociology of Medicine (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989).
2. For examples of the kind of work I have in mind, see R. Anspach, Deciding Who Lives: Fateful Choices in the Intensive-Care Nursery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
3. C. Bosk, All God's Mistakes: Genetic Counselling in a Pediatric Hospital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
4. D. Chambliss, Beyond Caring: Hospitals, Nurses and the Social Organization of Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996);
5. R. Fox and J. Swazey, Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992);
6. C. Lidz et al., "Barriers to Informed Consent," Annals of Internal Medicine 99 (1983):539-43;
7. R. Zussman, Intensive Care: Medical Ethics and the Medical Profession (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
8. T. Beauchamp and J. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. vi.
9. E. Emanuel and N. Dubler, "Preserving the Physician-Patient Relationship in the Era of Managed Care," JAMA 273 (1995): 328.
10. See also E. H. Morreim, Balancing Act: The New Medical Ethics of Medicine's New Economics (Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 1991)
11. and M. Rodwin, Medicine, Money, and Morals: Physicians' Conflicts of Interest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Of the 94 items Emanuel and Dubler cite, roughly one-quarter to one-third could fairly be characterized as reports of systematic empirical research. However, they also point out that in regard to their central claim, "while there has been significant attention on conflict of interest in fee-for-service practice, there has been much less effort to investigate and address conflict of interest in managed care" (p. 328). Both their willingness to cite social science research and their difficulty finding research relevant to their claims seem to me altogether compatible with the position I am taking here.
12. See ref. 2, Zussman, Intensive Care.
13. See also W. Finlay et al., "Queues and Care: How Medical Residents Organize Their Work in a Busy Clinic," Journal of Health and Social Behavior 31 (1990): 292-305.
14. B. Gray, The Profit Motive and Patient Care: The Changing Accountability of Doctors and Hospitals (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1993).
15. A. Hillman et al., "How Do Financial Incentives Affect Physicians' Clinical Decisions and the Financial Performance of Health Maintenance Organizations?" NEJM 321 (1989): 86-92.
16. D. Hemenway et al., "Physicians' Responses to Financial Incentives: Evidence from a For-Profit Ambulatory Care Center," NEJM 322 (1990): 1059-63.
17. M. Notman et al., "Social Policy and Professional Self-interest: Physician Responses to DRGs," Social Science and Medicine 25 (1987): 1259-67.
18. B. Hoffmaster, "Can Ethnography Save the Life of Medical Ethics?" Social Science & Medicine 35 (1992): 1421-31.
19. See also B. Crigger, "Bioethnography: Fieldwork in the Lands of Medical Ethics," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9 (1995): 400-417
20. and R. DeVries and P. Conrad, "Why Bioethics Needs Sociology" in R. DeVries and J. Subedi, eds., Bioethics and Society (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1998).