12KBW’s Daniel Sokol talks about his new book The Ethical Clinician: Practical Lessons from the Bedside and Courtroom
All clinicians, whatever their specialty or seniority, have a duty to act ethically. Those who fall short may harm patients, the health service, or their profession’s reputation, and expose themselves to disciplinary or legal proceedings.
Yet, perversely, formal education in ethics usually ends just as clinical practice begins. Those few clinicians who do engage in ethics and law CPD are often those who need it least.
In The Ethical Clinician, I have tried – in just 86 pages – to reach those ordinary clinicians with no particular interest or expertise in medical ethics and law.
The book blends the familiar four principles of medical ethics – respect for autonomy, beneficence (doing good), non-maleficence (not causing harm), and justice – with a selective introduction to medical law, grounded in my experience as a clinical ethicist and barrister. This includes early stints as an intern in clinical ethics in Toronto and Washington DC, visits to rural hospitals in India, committee work for the Ministry of Justice and the Royal College of Surgeons, and appearances in the courtroom, including a still-painful loss in my first clinical negligence trial.
Perhaps unusually for a book on medical ethics and law, I discuss the place of AI in ethical decision-making, the oft-overlooked value of kindness in clinical practice, and the need in some cases for moral courage.
While I include a few dramatic cases from my practice, such as the burns patient with Do Not Resuscitate tattooed on her chest or the diabetic patient whose leg was amputated without his knowledge, I stress that everyday practice is also full of ethical considerations, such as which patient to see first, how long to spend with each, and how best to share important information.
The result, I hope, is a useful guide for clinicians on how to recognise and resolve ethical problems in clinical care before they become the legal problems that we encounter as lawyers.
The Ethical Clinician: Practical Lessons from the Bedside and Courtroom is available in print (£7.99) or ebook (£4.99) here.
