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The Space of the Ethical Practice of Emergency Medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Michael Kelly  and
Ricardo Sanchez
Michael Kelly
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Columbia University (M. K.)
Ricardo Sanchez
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School (R. S.)
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Abstract

Emergency medicine, a new medical specialty in the United States, is an ethical practice that has developed through its interaction with the spaces in which it is situated. We discuss this claim in two steps followed by a demonstration. First we examine the historical evolution of the hospital, to provide the background for a lengthier account of the historical transformation of the emergency room. We then introduce Foucault's approach to ethics, to explain the sense in which emergency medicine is an ethical practice constituted, in part, by its space(s) of operation. The preliminaries of the application of our historico-ethical framework to emergency medicine, are presented, focusing on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Our intention is to provide a framework for the newest clinical specialty as an ethical practice in order to understand how to individuate its emerging ethical problems. The emphasis on space throughout enables us to integrate the historical development of emergency medicine with its present concrete setting, and to establish a basis for analyzing emergency medicine that does not rely uncritically on either a preferred ethical perspective or the perspective of its practitioners.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , Spring 1991 , pp. 79 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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