Ethical Principles In Health Care

It seems lately that questions of medical ethics and rationing are coming up more and more in the news, things like the rights of patients to make decisions and access to care. Ethics deals with right and wrong conduct, with what we ought to do and what we should refrain from doing. At the core of health care ethics is our sense of right and wrong and our beliefs about rights we possess and duties we owe others. Health care ethics consist of four major principles that guide health care professionals in making choices about medical care. These four principles are autonomy, justice, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. The values inherent in the principles clearly resonate with our moral norms, and their practical use in ethical decision

In spite of that, thinking about how these four principles relate to each other is an excellent way of framing your thought process. The first principle is autonomy which is the capacity to think, decide and act on one's own free initiative. Physicians and family members therefore should help the patient come to their own decision by providing full information; they should also uphold a competent, adult patient's decision, even if it appears medically wrong. The issue of autonomy becomes much more complicated for children, or in the situation of an adult who is not able to decide things for himself. Who decides what to do? Beneficence is the second principle which refers to doing all things that will benefit the patient. The third principle is nonmaleficence which is the duty of physicians to avoid harming our patients. The fourth key principle of medical ethics, justice, stands somewhat apart from the other three. Justice means physicians are obligated to treat every patient the same, irrespective of age, race, sex, personality, income, or insurance status. Medical ethics concerns how to handle moral problems arising out of the care of patients; often clinical decisions must consider more than just the patient's medical