Preface
LEGAL MEDICINE, now in its 8th Edition, has been the premier resource on law and medicine in the United States of America since 1986 when the 1st Edition was published. Constant and rapid changes in the health care delivery systems provide a real-world laboratory for examining the influences of medical law and ethics - from the courtroom and constitutional litigation to legislation, regulations of medical practice, drugs and devices, challenges of innovative medical technologies, electronic health records, reproduction rights, transplantation, end-of-life issues, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence, to name a few. During the past 36 years, this textbook has been used to teach practicing physicians and other health care workers, medical students in medical schools, as well as attorneys and law students. It has been immensely helpful and informative to medical and health law professionals and to the practice of medicine.
Law and medicine are intimately intertwined. The disciplines must be taught together beginning with the first year in medical schools so that the student can learn about the cross-fertilization of the two. Physicians/teachers and medical students should understand the similarities and differences in the ways medicine and law frame questions, address problems, and approach moral quandaries, as well as the various resources available to analyze these problems. They should learn that it is as problematic to never follow the law as it is to always follow mechanically what they consider to be the letter of the law. Failure to understand how the law works often results in inappropriate defensive medicine. The lack of a minimal understanding of the law can lead to inappropriate and misguided treatment of patients.
Legal Medicine and Medical Ethics must be prominent in both medical and law schools, during postgraduate training, and in every active medical practice to substantiate their importance. The topics should be relevant, rigorously taught, and horizontally and longitudinally integrated into the curriculum from the classroom through the clinical clerkships, to post-graduate training and medical practice. They must be seen as part of an integral to the practice of medicine. They must be taught over time, space, departments, and courses. As such, interdisciplinary teaching is almost an imperative.
This textbook of LEGAL MEDICINE provides specific medical-legal knowledge that is content, and method focused. It sensitizes medical and legal professionals to the value and nature of medical practice. It presents methods to identify and describe legal and ethical dilemmas. It provides formal, procedural, and substantive methodologies for resolving ethical, moral, and legal dilemmas. The ultimate goal is understanding of the law of medicine, developing high moral character, and practicing ethical and legal medicine.
S. Sandy Sanbar, MD, PhD, JD, FCLM
Editor, LEGAL MEDICINE
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