Professional Ethics Paper
Barbara Morrissey
HCS/478
January 23, 2012
Ann-Marie Peckham
Professional Ethics Paper
Medical professionals have a responsibility to their clients to deliver safe, quality care with regard for patients’ individuality, needs, and desires. Patients seek out professional health care with their own goals in mind. Their goals may not match ours, but we as health care providers have a duty to inform and treat our clients with competence and afford them the utmost dignity and respect. In short, we must be ethical in our practice.
We have an equal obligation to uphold the law. But law and ethics are not always synchronous. What may be legal in practice may be unethical; and what may seem the ethical
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This is also known as a consequentialist theory because an action is judged ethical based on its consequences. However, teleologists disagree on which actions are deemed right and which are wrong (Guido, 2010). Utilitarianism, a common type of consequential theory, states that the ethical action is one that does the most good for the most people (Hughs, 2002).
Hughs (2002) states ethical theories are only useful when applied in conjunction with the four primary ethical principles of health care: Respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Ethical Principles
These ethical principles are useful in health care when applied to the clinical decision-making process.
Respect for autonomy Autonomy speaks to personal freedom and self-determination. Essentially, it is affording patients the right to make their own decision regarding treatments affecting their body, health, and life, even if the health care providers do not agree with those decisions. Respecting patients’ right to autonomy communicates that we as health care professionals give them the freedom to choose a course of treatment that best serves their chosen lifestyle.
Informed consent exemplifies this principle. The medical team gives patients the facts concerning treatment options and allows them to decide for themselves whether or not to proceed, not based on what is ‘best’ for them as deemed by the medical staff but what they feel is best for themselves.
Beneficence and
One of the major areas of strength of the AMA Code of Ethics is the principle that outlines that the physician must “regard responsibility to the patient as paramount” (American Medical Association, n.d., par. 9). This principle outlines that importance of putting the patient first in all care aspects when working with a patient. Along with this, other principles set forth in the AMA Code of Ethics, while involving other aspects of care, state that the rights of the patient shall be acknowledged and followed during patient care. It is very important that healthcare codes of ethics are clear in defining that the patient needs to be considered first and foremost.
On the other hand although their similarities are close knit; they each have a distinct difference depending on the individual. For instance, recently the complex next door caught fire due to bad wiring. The company put all the tenants up for the weekend because they believed that this is what they ought to do. After the weekend the tenants were told that the situation had been turned over to their insurance company and it was out of their hands. The tenants believe that the company should hold their self-responsible and accommodate them much more.
In health and social care, four key Ethical Principles that are taken into account during these settings. Which are:
In health and social care sector, health care professionals take into account four key ethical principles when providing service to the service users. The key ethical principles are justice, autonomy, beneficence and non-maleficence. In health and social care settings people must be treated fairly without being judgemental regardless of who they are or where they come from. Health care professionals must allow their service users choose the type of services or treatment they want and the professional should support them in getting quality care that will benefit their service users. Also, health care professional must not
Ethics is a strongly culturally linked area of philosophy interrelated with what is considered acceptable human conduct. There are two branches of ethics; medical ethics and bioethics. The moral conduct and principles which govern practices of medical and health professionals falls under medical ethics, whereas in biomedicine and the health sciences theorised developments in the study of social and moral issues is considered bioethics(1). There are two philosophical principles within the conduction of health care research these are deontology and utilitarianism. Deontology is an approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions (2). Utilitarianism states that the most benefit
There are four principles of ethics: Respect for autonomy, Beneficence, Non maleficence and Justice. This four principles offers comprehensive thought of the ethical issues in clinical settings (Beauchamp and Childress 2001 cited in UK Clinical ethics Network 2011).
P2 Understand ethical issues relating to research in health and social care Ethical principles Protection from harm- In any health care setting it is always important to make sure that all the individuals in all the aspects of the area are being protected from harm. In any organization the most important policy is the protection policy this enables the staff to make sure that all the individuals feel safe. Protection from harm does not only mean being protected from abuse It could be protecting people's health and wellbeing and enabling them to live free from harm, neglect and abuse.
Informed consent stands for self-determination and respect for autonomy. Autonomy is the most influential ethical principle and the main focal point in health care. It is a major concept in relation to informed consent and its simplest form can be seen as the patient’s right to determine what will or will not be done to his or her body. Expanding societal values and evolving patient centred healthcare system influences nursing practice greatly. In Canada, physicians are legally responsible for obtaining informed consent but nurses are also involved in every aspect of the informed consent process. For e.g. Nurses can perform this role when they notice that patients
The third principle of bioethics is the principle of beneficence. This principle is one that should be used to provide benefit to clients. Under this, the main goal for the client--health care provider relationship is
Autonomy and Consent in Health Care Medical consent forms play a crucial role relating to treatment in the medical field. Consent can be defined as understanding the procedure and agreeing to it (Soper, 2016). The consent form serves two purposes to inform the patient of the upcoming procedure and to protect the hospital by outlining potential risks and complications. However, the vast majority of citizens are not versed in medical jargon and this can affect how well they understand what is going on.
When taking into account the case study, four ethical principles will be examined. These are: respect for autonomy, non-malfeasance, beneficence and justice. The principles are seen as the starting points for the development of ethical approaches to care practice, providing a practical set of principles, which rather than offering direct answers to ethical dilemmas, set out useful guiding principles for practitioners when faced with controversial decisions (K217, Book 4, p34).
Professional values and ethics are based on the foundations of personal values, professional and, academic integrity. Integrity is the act of doing what is right even if there is no one is around. Personal values are comprised of an individual’s integrity, morals, and ethics, the standards in which, an individual holds him or herself to. One must exercise personal values which in turn become the foundation professional values.
Ethics are rules of conduct and moral principles of an individual which have various origins such as family, culture, and social environment. Given the diversity of people in the healthcare profession and the importance of providing care that is ethically sound
There are four basic ethical and bioethical principles that have a strong influence in the practice of medicine, predominantly medicine that deals with those who are dying. The first is beneficence, which directs the physician and health care worker to take positive actions, specifically by restoring health and relieving suffering (Bongard et al., 2008). Then there is nonmaleficence. Goldman and Schafer (2012) add that nonmaleficence is the idea that people should not be harmed or injured knowingly. The third ethical principle is autonomy,
Consequentialism focuses on the actions of an individual and states that the right action is the action with the best overall