Definition of the problem: In health care institutions caregivers from different cultures treat patients who themselves may come from different cultural backgrounds. The ethical impact of this issue is how in spite of these cultural differences mutual understanding can be achieved. Modern health care systems must react to this multicultural challenge explaining: what does universality of the medical task mean, what are the consequences of demographic change, how to deal with the multicultural work force of the modern health care facilities, (...) and how one must differentiate between universal and variable elements of the health care delivery. The following questions are discussed: 1. Which aspects of medicine require consideration of the multicultural structures? 2. Which medical fields must especially integrate multicultural perspectives? 3. How the patient's cultural context can be taken into account.Arguments: These levels of the problem are illustrated by the through the case of a German University hospital which presents a difficult decision making process.Conclusion: Three requirements result from this: 1. to work out the differences of behaviour, 2. to define the differences of value systems of both parts, the patient and the caregiver, and 3. to agree on mutual goals and values. (shrink)

Corona showed us how important the medical and statistical data are. They inform, but are difficult to understand. We need more. We know too little about how people cope with problems, too little about what our life together depends on. We need a deeper understanding, in order to perceive the dangers to our personal and social life. This book tries to do that with thoughtfulness: it raises questions and calls apparent self-evident facts in question, it connects intellectual sources of thought (...) by linking experiences from history, literature with the current problems of the corona crisis. And where do we go from here? Are there ways out of a battered social life to a new solidarity? (shrink)

Definition of the problem: Compromise is an ethical category. During the last 20 years it has rarely been considered, although there are many controversial ethical issues in medicine with no willingness for consensus. In the process of ethics consultation, dissatisfaction with the consultation or afterwards with the decision to act was also noticed.Arguments: Ethics consultation must take into account the anti-ethical implications. Therefore, it must consider the meaning of ethical compromise (1) as an existential option, (2) as a moment in (...) moral development, and (3) as a presupposition for medical interactions.Conclusion: Compromise means to act competently to mediate between morals and situational challenges. Thus, moral optimalism could easily become fundamentalism, which is the horizon of ethics consultation. (shrink)