NSHEN has developed the Bioethics Book Club as a resource for ethics committees, organizations and healthcare teams looking for a fun, creative, interactive way to facilitate discussion about health ethics issues and engage in ethics education.

We will select a variety of books with health ethics themes – both fiction and non-fiction – and develop a handout for each that includes a summary, some of the ethics issues addressed in the book and discussion questions.

Your group will select the book that is most relevant or of interest to you, give your group members time to read the book, and then use the discussion questions as a guide to facilitate a group discussion around the health ethics issues within each book and how they relate to your practice.

Some of these books are available in the NSHEN Lending Library and most are available through Nova Scotia’s public libraries.

Continue to check back often! Also, if you know of a book not on our list that would be a good fit for Bioethics Book Club, please let us know!

  • New Book Summary with Discussion Questions

    March 2025

    Doctors and Friends

    Written prior to Covid-19 by a former emergency medicine physician, Doctors and Friends incorporates unexpected wit, razor-edged poignancy, and a deeply relatable cast of characters who provoke both laughter and tears. Martin provides a unique insider’s perspective into the world of medical professionals working to save lives during the most difficult situations of their careers.

    Doctors and Friends Discussion Questions
    Download

Past Summaries

  • Inside the O’Briens

    Joe O’Brien is a respected police officer in Boston. He is in his early forties and is married to Rosie. Together they have four adult children. Rosie and some of Joe’s colleagues start noticing changes in Joe’s behavior. He gets uncharacteristic temper outbursts and has involuntary movements. At first, Joe does not acknowledge that something… View Summary

  • He Gets That From Me

    He Gets That From Me By Jaqueline Friedland SparkPress, 2021. SummaryMaggie Fisher, her partner Nick, and their toddler, Wyatt, live in Pheonix. Maggie dreams of one day being able to afford to go back to school and study to become a teacher. One day she reads an advert from a fertility clinic, pairing couples with… View Summary

  • The Storyteller

    The Storyteller By Jodi Picoult Washington Square Press, 2013. Summary[1] Sage Singer, a young woman in her early twenties, is attending a grief support group after her mother’s death. Here she meets an elderly man, Josef Weber. Sage and Josef quickly become good friends, but their friendship changes when Josef asks Sage to help him… View Summary

  • In Our Likeness: A Novel

    Graham has a crush on his work colleague, Nessie. They work in a start-up tech company. One day Nessie approached Graham, asking him to test out a new algorithm she’s developed to detect lies on the internet. Graham agrees to test it. He edits in Nessie’s online profile information with a view to test if… View Summary

  • More or Less Maddy

    Summary Maddy Banks has just finished her first year at university. She’s had a difficult year, and been depressed, but during the summer Maddy’s mood changes significantly. She can’t sleep at night, and she acts in ways that are unusual for her. At first, Maddy’s mood changes go unnoticed by others, but during a family… View Summary

  • The Brill Pill

    In the not-so-distant future, the highly ambitious scientist, William Dalal, is working on improving lives of people using brain regeneration. However, personal tragedy and a rivalry between Will and another scientist causes Will to lose his moral compass. Driven by his ambition to help people become smarter and more successful, Will decides to take matters… View Summary

  • The Mad Women’s Ball

    Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugénie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum. Because Eugénie… View Summary

Past Summaries (PDF)

(These older summaries are available in PDF format to view or download)