Social, Ethical, and Economic Problems in Medicine

Abstract

The methods and approaches physicians use to learn from their clinical experiences not only perfect their skills, but heighten their personal satisfaction and passion for practice. Such activities can no longer be limited to the study of clinical findings, diagnosis, and therapy, for extraordinary medical innovations have raised a rash of problems—economic, social, legal, moral, and ethical. Can we afford the advances? How do we control the escalating costs? How do we provide the new services for the economically deprived? How do we reconcile society’s ever-increasing demands and expectations of medicine with its increasing criticism of rising costs? What role should medical and professional judgment play in ethical quandaries? How do we define the difference between prolonging living and prolonging dying? All segments of society have become interested in these questions and problems.