Ethical Principles Of Justice, Utilitarianism, Fidelity, And Beneficence

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Ethical principles of justice, utilitarianism, fidelity, and beneficence all play a role when dealing with the ethics of HIV. Beneficence imposes a duty for health employers to act in the best interest for patients, take positive action to help and to do well. Justice portrays equality and it requires that people should be treated fairly. It explains that a healthcare employer will treat all patients equally and use good judgement. Fidelity involves with loyalty, fairness, and being truthful. This principle applies to the patient and being honest with their partners about their status. Lastly, utilitarianism theory supports the greater good and what is best for people. It is important that HIV positive test results are reported, so third parties …show more content…

However, healthcare employers have argued that it’s an unnecessary invasion of their privacy. I argue that patients do not have a right to know such information because of its small risk of transmission. One could argue that a patient has a right-to-know based on the regulation of informed consent. The patient is entitled to know such information that might impose a risk on their health. If healthcare workers exposed their HIV status, the disclosure might sway patients to try to avoid health workers who are HIV positive. Another main reason is patients have no confidentiality responsibilities and could easily spread this information in a harmful way. Physicians have an ethical obligation to do no harm to their patients. The American Medical Association advocates HIV positive healthcare workers to stay away from performing internal surgeries as well as hip replacements. Health care workers have a duty to inform patients or employers that they are HIV positive if they perform invasive procedures on patients. A physician or other health care worker who performs exposure-prone procedures and becomes HIV-positive should disclose his/her status to a state public health official or local review committee. An HIV- infected physician or other health care worker should abstain from conducting exposure-prone procedures or perform such procedures without permission from the local review committee and the informed consent of the

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