McCullough Laurence B
Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza MS 420, Houston, TX 77030-3411, USA.
J Med Philos. 2012 Feb;37(1):1-5. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhr057. Epub 2012 Jan 13.
It is well-recognized that uncertainty is an endemic feature and limitation of clinical judgment and practice that cannot be eliminated in many cases. Among the tasks of clinical ethics is the responsible management of uncertainties, first articulated in E. Haavi Morreim's very nice concept of the "moral management of medical uncertainty." The papers in the 2012 Clinical Ethics issue of the Journal provide philosophically innovative and clinically applicable accounts of the varieties of uncertainty in clinical medicine and therefore in clinical ethics: epistemic uncertainty, metaphysical uncertainty, and relational uncertainty.
