Being An Ethicist

A four-decade practitioner's guide to the work of ethics consulting Ethics consultants are now a common fixture across a broad range of professions and occupations. Widespread in hospitals, ethicists also regularly assist journalists, businesses, government workers, and academics. Being an Ethicist provides a first-person perspective on the issues such ethicists face, including whether and how they provide recommendations, as well as the skills and demeanors needed to be most effective. Based on Christopher Meyers’s four decades as a professor, ethics center director, clinical ethicist, and consultant, the book is part memoir, part practice guide. Building upon two provocative positions—that well-trained consultants possess genuine expertise in ethics decision-making and that they bear a duty to advocate at case, institutional, and social levels—it highlights the intellectual, political, and emotional demands ethicists routinely face. To meet those demands, Meyers explains, ethicists need theoretical grounding, qualitative empirical methods, political savvy, and complex ethics reasoning. Through realistic scenarios, Being an Ethicist captures the work’s many challenges and the emotional resilience it demands. Readers will also find: An accessible narrative style that blends rigorous analysis with engaging personal anecdotes from a wide-ranging career in applied ethics Strategies for activist ethics practice, including advocating for improved decision-making at case, organizational, and broader social levels Case studies drawn from clinical ethics, journalism, and academic contexts that reveal the real-world complexity of consultation work Analysis of what constitutes ethics expertise and how consultants can develop and defend their professional standing within institutional structures Guidance on building emotional resilience for the psychological demands that ethics consulting places on practitioners across diverse professional settings Written for ethics practitioners—including compliance officers, health care ethics committee members, and graduate students in related professional programs—Being an Ethicist also serves advanced undergraduates in philosophy. Its accessible, case-rich style makes it valuable to anyone interested in what it means to do ethics work.