Rethinking Healthcare Improvement : Philosophy and Ethics in Practice

What is ‘good’ healthcare? Does that new procedure benefit both patient A and patient B? Bringing together the fields of philosophy and public health, this open access book provides a much-needed framework for navigating the ethical issues that arise in healthcare improvement. Acknowledging the complexity in attempts to raise the quality of healthcare, from different cultural and intellectual perspectives to ever-increasing costs, Cribb, Mitchell and Entwistle reveal the contribution philosophy can make to improvement activities.In four clear parts they uncover the ethical impulses already embedded in health services and connect them with philosophical literature to present an original and practically useful guide to answering questions about what is better and why.In so doing, they explore a number of ethical approaches, including value-led systems of improvement and a decentring of consequentialist methods in order to prioritise compassion and social justice over figures and outcomes