The Nature and Limitations of Conscience in Healthcare

A comprehensive theory of conscience and its role in healthcare decision-making, with guidance on how to regulate its exercise legally.

Stephen W. Smith (Author)

9781108490115, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 October 2025

222 pages
23.5 x 16 x 1.7 cm, 0.47 kg

The role of conscience in healthcare decision-making is explored in this important intervention in the fields of Health Law and Ethics, Medicine, Nursing and Philosophy. It takes a broad approach to conscience, looking beyond the standard examples of conscientious objection to argue that conscience permeates healthcare decisions. However, it also shows that not all decisions of conscience are worthy of legal or societal protection and that these are interests to be weighed rather than rights. Instead, conscience should be protected only when the individual exercising conscience abides by specific responsibilities. Additionally, the book explores the important issues of complicity with healthcare decisions and institutional or organisational conscience and argues they play an oversized role in general discussions of conscience. It further claims that we ought to pay much more attention to conscientious provision. The book concludes by looking at ways to more effectively regulate claims of conscience.

1. Introduction
2. Conscience from first principles
3. Respecting conscience
4. Responsibilities of conscience
5. Conscientious provision and objection
6. Complicity and corporate conscience
7. Regulating claims of conscience
8. Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Medical & healthcare law [LNTM]