Healthcare ethics and the law- Why law pervades medicine

Abstract

Law has always been the rulebook by which most healthcare professionals guide their medical practice. However and despite healthcare’s founding fathers being esteemed philosophers and ethicists, we rarely use moral or ethical principals to guide the care we provide to patients. In this article, a review of Charity Scott’s essay entitled Why Law Pervades Medicine: An Essay on Ethics in Health Care shows the continued divide between healthcare and legal practitioners and suggests a movement to a higher standard, namely ethics. Journal of Community Medicine