Non Fatal Medical Errors

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Utilization of the medical field implicitly condones personal safety and well being into the hands of professionals. Diagnosing, treating, and preventing disease is an aspect of medicine that requires a variety of solutions, therefore patient’s are exposed to a greater likelihood of unintentional medical error (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/medicine/). However, with any extreme and intensive field, the risks of error are elevated due to the very nature and purpose of the science. Reporting non-fatal medical errors in the healthcare system is a complicated process for doctors and the facilities of which they represent, but entirely doable and necessary in order to maintain legal and social promises of ethical practice. As priorities within …show more content…

From the utilitarianism perspective, the well being of the greater majority, rather than the individual patient’s well-being, is weighed when considering whether to report the error. As natural law explains, personal reflection upon one’s conscience and values will decipher whether the mistake must be reported in order to maintain ethical stability. Regardless, the medical field provides pivotal and necessary procedures that offer greater positive effects and benefits to hoards of patients on a global scale. When graduating from medical school, doctors commit their professional practice to utmost ethical dignity, a plausible and rational agreement. In its bare and basic form, the medical field’s entire purpose of existence is to help the wounded, the needy, the ill, and the …show more content…

Although the patient’s ultimately must pay the greatest toll when a medical error occurs as it is their own life and personal functioning that is directly affected, the medical field at large presents greater benefits to the mass majority of people. While a medical error may cause an individual to lose a limb, the greater benefit may be that their life was spared from fatal demise. The utilitarian and natural law approaches to this ethical dilemma differ in their specifics, but find mutual ground upon the basis of agreement that medical professionals ought to personally seek the most beneficial means of reparation after the mistake is recognized. Beyond the potential risks and complications that the medical field poses and creates, it is an element of societal aid that will always be utilized and implemented because the benefits reaped wildly outweigh the potential losses and

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