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Patients' Interests and Clients' Wishes: Physicians and Lawyers in Discord

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Bernard M. Dickens
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Extract

It is intended that this exploration of different interfaces of law and medicine will present a general overview. These reflections on some comparisons of and, particularly, contrasts between the health professions and the legal profession do not aspire to the profundity, moderation, or elegance of, for instance, Prof. William Curran's recent learned discourse. They are self-consciously more polemical than a truly scholarly study should be, and include some crude or simplistic characterizations. Their purpose is to provoke reaction, however, and thereby to contribute to health professionals' and lawyers' consideration of their experience of each other.

It is trite to observe that the two inevitabilities of modern existence are death and taxes. It is more interesting to observe the consequence, however: that the professional mediators of death and taxes—namely, health professionals and lawyers—are equally inescapable. Members of these professions are not necessarily propelled into each other's arms, but in their professional and personal lives they cannot extricate themselves from each other's disciplines.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Fall 1987 , pp. 110 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1987

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