Guidelines for Case Summaries
Medical & Health Care Ethics
Purpose: Case summaries should enable you to apply major ethical theories and concepts to situations encountered in the practice of medicine.
Procedure: You will select one case from each of three major topic areas you choose for examination, drawn either from the texts or from other printed or on-line resources. Your paper will briefly describe key elements of your case, and then draw from at least two major ethical theories and a variety of major moral principles to examine the ethical implications of your case. You will consider such questions as the following:
—How would a Kantian/Utilitarian/follower of Ross evaluate the moral options that are involved in this case?
—What major moral principles are involved?
—What biblical/religious guidance might be applied?
—How might a physician decide what course of action would be right or wrong?
—How might a patient or family member evaluate their options in this situation?
You will also include at least brief reference to other related cases in the field, enabling you to make observations about how variations in the facts of the cases might change your ethical evaluation. You will conclude with a summary statement about your own ethical position on the key issues involved in your case (even if your “position” winds up straddling the fence!).
Product: Case summaries will be roughly 4 pages (typed or printed, double spaced), with length being secondary to adequacy of presentation (no, you don’t need to juggle font sizes or margins to make the text “fit”!). Papers should include footnotes and bibliography, using Chicago/Turabian citation style.
