Legal & Insurance

How Hospitals Shape End of Life Care
Summary of Sharon. Kaufman, PhD Presentation to
California Coalition for Compassionate Care
Steering Committee Meeting June 3, 2005
Excerpted from Minutes of Meeting

Sharon Kaufman, Ph.D. Professor of Medical Anthropology at UC San Francisco recently published a book entitled, And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. (2005, NY: Scribner). Dr. Kaufman said in her role as a medical anthropologist she “makes the strange, familiar; and makes the familiar, strange.” She described her recent research about the culture of hospitals and how they influence the “problem of death,” which she defined as people dying with too much technology and not enough humanity.

A Framework For Thinking Ethically
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University
This document is designed as an introduction to thinking ethically. We all have an image of our “better selves” - or of how we are when we act ethically or are “at our best.” We probably also have an image of what an ethical community, an ethical business, or an ethical government is - and maybe even an ethical society as a whole. Ethics really has to do with all three levels - acting ethically as individuals, creating ethical organizations and governments, and making our society as a whole ethical in the way it treats all.