Ethical Reasoning In Decision Making

Ethical reasoning is a thought out process that involves us considering the impact of our deeds on those organizations and people we deal with. Whilst the majority of our decisions are normal reactions to life and how we deal with things, ethical dilemmas occur when we are confronted with unexpected and unusual situations that demand an instantaneous response.

The basis of ethical decisions involves evaluation and equilibrium; it is the way that we adopt correct choices over bad ones. So, the immediate dilemma is usually to ask one’s self “what would a good person do when confronted by this dilemma?” For a decision that is not so easy to answer then people can ask themselves the following three questions.

• Are there any benefits likely to result and if so do they override the burden?

• Will you be gaining from the choice you make at the expense of someone else?

• What will the end result be from your decision, will anyone be hurt emotionally or physically from the decision you make?

Values are first formed when we are children and manifest themselves as ideals that form and inspire the very essence of our character and behavior. These values shape our emotions, knowledge, thought processes and finally our choosing appropriate reaction. As individuals our values differ because just as our ideals contribute to the way we behave, they also affect the way we see the world and the way we react to it. It is very essential that we recognize the way our values impact on the choices we make “….throughout a lifetime, individuals are gradually socialized by/in the cultural patterns current in their society and which are constructed through daily social interaction, as well as through ritual processes and institutional affiliations.”(Enferm...

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...nts, each of these instances show that healer’s ethics become dependent on the policies of the state. We specifically see an example of this in the Nazi regime by the fact that medical practitioners were not only instrumental in the genocide of people by their technical developments of torture and scientific experiments, but that they also became the first and foremost political and intellectual leaders of a state apparatus that was set up to kill, maim and destroy. In this example we can see how medical ethics can become blurred when controlled by a central state apparatus and how ethics, both medical and social, can become controlled by self-serving agendas. This in turn shows how the misuse of the body politic (Briggs 1970; Turnbull 1962) can be used to the detriment and harm of society and how medical ethics need to be closely aligned with societal reasoning’s.