There are lots of reasons for reading this book. Perhaps you are facing an exam and need to revise. Maybe you did not really understand some of the teaching you had before in your courses and want to make better sense of things. Perhaps you are working or teaching in the area and want practical examples. But it might be that now on the ward or in practice you have come face-to-face with something you don’t know how to deal with or you do not think is quite right. Excellence in medical ethics and law needs to go beyond theory and work properly in practice. Equally, wanting to be a doctor would normally mean wanting to be a good one, but as demanding as it is to be clear about guidelines and frameworks or up to the mark in diagnosis and treatment, achieving this knowledge may still fail to point to what decisions should actually be made and why. Often something more is needed. For instance, deciding between treatments and evaluating side effects will be difficult without finding out about how a patient lives and what she would want to make of her life. There may be a conflict between what the best medical advice suggests and what this patient is prepared to accept. Perhaps what could be done is very expensive, or someone asks if it’s really fair to put someone through it all. The patient may be confused, a young child or someone in a new or foreign culture. Perhaps there is pressure on you as medic or adviser to agree to something you do not think is best in the circumstances.