Abstract
The tenth monograph of the Czech Medical Chamber on ethics, communication and psychology in medicine deals with the importance of hope in individual medical disciplines and discusses aspects of hope in a broader sense and in ethical-psychological contexts for the patient. Dozens of top representatives of medical disciplines contributed to the book.
In the General Context section, theorists in the field of medical ethics look at the phenomenon of hope in historical, ontogenetic, sociological and psychological connotations. In the Fields of Medicine section, specialists from individual medical disciplines comment on the topic, for example oncology, cardiology, rheumatology, algesiology, neurology, surgery, neurosurgery, obstetrics, neonatology, pediatrics, urology, nephrology, dermatovenerology, dentistry, ophthalmology, nuclear medicine, imaging methods or palliative care.
In the Clinical context, the authors deal with the hopes of patients in the terminal stage of a serious illness and their families, the hopes for a more humane death and sovereign decision-making at the end of life. Special topics include, for example, a treatise on hope in the field of information technology, philosophical and theological reflections on hope, and even a conversation between two pediatric neurologists on the topic of fulfilling the hopes of their patients.