The book is intended to be an introductory guide for healthcare practitioners, legal practitioners, healthcare students and law students who are concerned with the delivery of healthcare services in South Africa. The book emphasises the ethical and legal aspects of healthcare in the country while making references to international human rights and ethical standards applicable to healthcare services. As the book is a guide, it does not deal exhaustively with the topics discussed. Instead it aims to give healthcare and legal practitioners some general guidelines.
New edition update:
- an updated ethics chapter that includes a robust section on African indigenous values in the context of health care.
- a chapter on universal health care coverage and the NHI.
- the legislation need to be reviewed and updated.
- a section on alternate dispute resolution.
- the section on research also requires updating.
- the case studies also need to be made more recent to include current contextually relevant issues like the Life Esidimeni Tragedy.
Table of contents:
Part 1: Introduction to Bioethics, Human Rights and Health Law: Principles and Practice - Background
Chapter 1 Ethical concepts, theories and principles and their application to healthcare
Chapter 2. Codes of healthcare ethics
Chapter 3. Health and human rights
Chapter 4. Health law - the basics
Part 2: Specific Topics
Chapter 5. Professionalism and the healthcare practitioner-patient relationship
Chapter 6. Consent
Chapter 7. Confidentiality
Chapter 8. Medical malpractice and professional negligence
Chapter 9. Reproductive health
Chapter 10. Issues in genetics
Chapter 11. Use of human tissue
Chapter 12. End of life issues
Chapter 13. HIV and AIDS
Chapter 14. Resource allocation
Chapter 15. Business ethics - the healthcare context
Chapter 16. Human health and the environment
Chapter 17. The ethics of research