Making Health Care Decisions: A Catholic Guide

Health care is one of the most important challenges of the 21st-century. Medical advances have made it very difficult for health care providers, patients, and their families to keep pace with the ethical problems inherited with new procedures. Ethicists must meet the demands of medical research, government regulations, and Church directives.

Among the issues under discussion are embryonic stem cell research, end-of-life care, organ transplants, genetic engineering, and advance health care directives.

Making Health Care Decisions is a practical Catholic guide on these issues. It provides an overview of Catholic medical ethics, with references for further reading, discussion questions, and a glossary of medical and ethical terminology.

Four topics from this book are also available in booklet form for people with specific needs and questions.

Ron Hamel is ethicist at the Catholic Health Association in St. Louis, Missouri. Other contributors include Michael R. Panicola, Mark Miller, Richard C. Sparks, M. Therese Lysaught, Carol Tauer, and Patricia Talone.

Paperback

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764814028
• ISBN13: 9780764814020
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Liguori Publications
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

helpful and faithful guide

This book, produced under the auspices of The Catholic Health Association of the United States, is subtitled "A Catholic Guide". It certainly is that. It gives reliable guidance to anyone who wants to know the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church in various areas of health care ethics. But the book deserves a much wider audience. Non-Catholic Christians will find this book brilliantly helpful, as will many non-theists. While the book helpfully expounds on such topics as genetic testing, embryonic stem cell research, and organ transplantation, the most valuable sections of the book for the average reader are probably the ones that deal with making decisions at the end of life, and making decisions about medically administered nutrition and hydration. These chapters, as indeed all the chapters in the book, fully reflect the teachings of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Making Health Care Decisions is essential reading for the Pastoral Care staff of the Catholic hospital at which I serve, and for the members our ethics committee. This easy to read and understand book is a completely faithful guide for Catholics who want to make ethically appropriate health care decisions. It will serve non-Catholic Christians (of which I am one) in the same way.