ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the questions with particular reference to the context of primary care, drawing on the experience of ethics education and support in secondary care where appropriate. Health professionals encounter ethical issues in their work on a daily basis. Sometimes these are explicitly acknowledged. The growth of awareness of ethical issues in healthcare has, until recently, largely been driven by concern about ethical issues arising in acute medicine in the hospital setting, for example, end-of-life decision-making, ethics in intensive care and so on. The chapter looks at the history of the development of ethics support and education and also considers the relationship between the ethical issues arising in secondary and primary care. It describes the development of clinical ethics support and education. The focus of clinical ethics support in all countries where it has developed has been very much hospital-based and concerned with issues arising in acute medicine.
