Volume I of the Casebook, Making Difficult Decisions with Patients and Families is a free and open-access online resource for continuing professional education in healthcare ethics for doctors, nurses, and allied healthcare staff. Each case is supported by expert commentaries highlighting ethical issues and a clinical perspective by a healthcare professional offering practical insight. Additional support is provided by informational backgrounders, questions for reflection, and further online resources.

The characters that appear in the Casebook are fictitious and modelled for teaching and learning purposes on the basis of common clinical encounters described by healthcare professionals, and do not refer to specific, real individuals, living or dead. Any individuals appearing in photographs depicting these characters bear no relationship or connection whatsoever to the stories ascribed to those characters.

Before you read the Casebook...

There are two different ways to access the cases in Making Difficult Decisions with Patients and Families:

  1. Go to a case by clicking on 'Read more about the case' in the case summary above, or
  2. Access topics of interest by making your selection in the 'Browse by Topic' section below.

Learn about how these cases can be used to facilitate discussion in staff training, workshops or the classroom by clicking on the 'Teaching and Learning Guide'.