Good Medicine: 21st Century Ethics for Patients & Their Families

Award-winning physician Philip C. Hébert creates a brave and intimate portrait of the complex ethical imperatives at the heart of good medicine: doctors do not have all the answers; patients must be heard; and their needs, desires, fears, and experiences must be reflected in how practitioners look after them.



Medical science continues to advance to previously unimagined heights in its diagnostic and treatment capabilities. With these advances, however, come unexpected ethical dilemmas for practitioners, patients, and families. In Good Medicine, Dr. Hébert approaches these questions of pressing and fundamental importance from the dual point of view of acclaimed physician and long-time patient. With remarkable balance and sensitivity, he explores a range of politically, constitutionally, and ethically contentious matters, including assisted suicide, treatment refusal and suspension, and the overall allocation of medical resources. Hébert pairs his artful analysis with the real-life, often deeply moving stories of those who have lived these challenges. Hébert offers piercing and compassionate insight into the relationship between patients and medical professionals, and guides readers towards the open and empathetic communication needed to ensure good medicine for everyone.

PHILIP HÉBERT is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. In 2008, he received the William Marsden Award in Medical Ethics. In 2011, the College of Family Physicians of Canada named him Ontario's Family Physician of the Year. From 1989 to 2010, he was on full-time medical staff at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre where he also acted as a bioethics consultant and chaired the Research Ethics Board. He is the author of Doing Right, a practical guide to ethics for medical trainees and physicians. He lives in Toronto.

About Philip Hebert