Deliberative clinical ethics: getting back to basics in the work of clinical ethics and clinical ethicists

The six papers in the 2014 clinical ethics number of the Journal get us back to the basics in the work of clinical ethics and clinical ethicists: getting clear about concepts that should be used in achieving deliberative clinical ethics. The papers explore the concepts of the best interests of the patient, health and disease understood in their proper relationship to autonomy in our species, the therapeutic obligation, and the therapeutic imperative. The final paper appraises the systematic review, a scholarly tool for tracking the basic concepts of clinical ethics in the literature.