Difference Between Public Health And Public Medical Ethics

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Medical ethics is focused on a single patient or family where public health ethics is focused on an entire population or group of people. Conflict may arise when the good of one patient does not meet the good of the entire population or the entire group that the one person belongs to. Public health emphasizes the greater good of larger numbers of people where medical ethics is focused on just one. The principle of justice plays an important role in both medical and public health ethics. Justice is the core of public health ethics and is associated with the equality of opportunity, equity of access, or equity in benefits (Williams & Torrens, 2008). Public health serves the entire population; thus it is focused on equity among various social …show more content…

On the other hand, in public health ethics, autonomy is the right to privacy, and freedom of actions as long as those choices do not result in harm to others (Williams & Torrens, 2008). So in essence, in the medical world, people have the right to do whatever they want to do but when it has the potential to be harmful to more than just them; public health steps in to stop the process. In medical ethics, beneficence is the process of the physician doing no harm and promoting the welfare of and health of his patients; generally doing good. In public health, beneficence is the overall goal of public health policy and practice, however, it doesn’t focus on one single patient but rather the entire population. This removes the individual rights factor from consideration and makes it more about societal needs and rights. An example would be; If a patient doesn’t have health insurance; they are considered private pay in the medical world. In public health there typically isn’t a charge for services and if there is it is based on a sliding scale that is based on income. Those who cannot afford the cost of the office visit in a medical office, often do not get seen. This could result in a conflict in the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence that are a huge part of medical ethics. On the other side of this conflict is the

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