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     So many different health care workers offer health care: ambulance workers, specialists, speech therapists, optometrists, physiotherapists, general practitioners ((IPs), dentists, rehabilitation counsellors, nurses, occupational therapists, pharmacists, radiologists, laboratory scientists, medical records and health administrators, and many others. They are all are an essential part of our health system.. This book delves into health care ethics with the workplace, the training ground for health care workers, as the starting point. It is designed to be useful to all health care workers....

     This book is about ethics. You don't need to be an ethicist to understand ethics in the health context, and you don't need to have learnt a lot of philosophy to be able to think about ethics as you work in your health profession. This book is written so that the information it contains can be used in a practical way in your everyday work. It starts with you. the professional carer, and examines the way professional work and your interaction with your clients or patients is shaped by ethics.

     Ethics is after all, only a tool. It is not just an abstract introspective pursuit. Rather, it helps us reflect on real-life issues, and is also a process that can be applied to real concerns ami situations as they unfold. Ethics in health contexts is sometimes simply called 'ethics': at other times it is called 'bioethics', or 'medical ethics'. You may like to choose a definition of ethics that you understand best from the following options:

- ethics—'ways of understanding and examining the moral life'.

- bioethics—'a popular contraction for "biomedical ethics", which is the study of moral value in the life sciences and in their clinical application'.

- medical ethics—'the analytical activity in which the concepts, assumptions, beliefs, attitudes,  emotion,  reasons,  and   arguments   underlying  medico-moral   decision making are examined critically'.

     The common theme followed in this book is that health care ethics is not only about setting acceptable standards, but is also about reflecting on what you should aim for in your work as a health care professional. It is about reflecting on optimal standards, and pursuing those standards. The book is written in an interactive way. Dotted throughout, you will fmd individual and group exercises that will help you think about particular issues or standards, or particular styles of ethical reflection. Tutorial-type triggers and case studies are also included.

While there is a section on ethics theories at the end of the book, in Chapter 10, you will find ethics theories and frameworks woven into all the other chapters. As you work through the exercises, you will become more familiar with key ways of identifying, and working to resolve, ethics issues in health care. In this framework, the philosophical aspect of ethics becomes a tool that you, as a health care worker, can use to reflect on ethics as it applies in your profession and m your clinical work.

     You will not be an expert in ethics after working through this book, but you will be considerably more informed. You will naturally want to consult with other colleagues who are interested in ethics, and with ethicists, at tunes when you are faced with complex challenges. This book starts you on a path of ethical reflection. It also encourages you to consult with others so that you do not face ethical challenges, as a health care worker, alone. The author. Catherine Herglund (BSc (Psychol) PhD (Community Med)) is not a practising health professional. Yet, with undergraduate psychology training, and postgraduate research and health ethics experience, she is often asked to advise on reflection processes for health professionals.

     This text meets the need to consider ethics m the routine context of health care. It follows a sequence that is familiar in health care education and practice: training, adopting a profession, becoming a team member in a health care setting, beginning to see clients, and working with clients as their treatment progresses.

     The book also meets the need to learn about ethics theory. Hut it moves beyond the traditional theory-oriented structure of most ethics texts to a structure that is generated by practical, professional, and client needs. Key doctrines, moral distinctions, and theories are woven into the text. Principlist approaches are explored, as are frameworks such as utilitarianism and deontology. The text does not favour any one of these. Rather, it leaves the choice up to the reader. Readers are encouraged to relate the ideas presented to their own views and experiences, and to answer questions as they read.

     This text takes a novel approach to teaching ethics, drawing on practical experience and contemporary issues m its exploration of ethical choices made in health care. Taking the sequence described above—training, adoption of a profession, becoming a team member, and seeing and working with clients—the book focuses on the interaction between the health provider and his or her client.

     Teachers of health care ethics can use this book as a training manual or class resource. It provides an extensive choice of tutorial triggers, and contains sufficient theory to be able to be used in an ethics curriculum, or integrated with core health care subjects.