Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay respect for personal autonomy
Essay respect for personal autonomy
Ethical dilemmas about autonomy
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay respect for personal autonomy
Right to Choose Medical Treatment
According to Philipus Auredous Paracelsus, “medicine is not merely a science but an art. The character of the physician may act more powerfully upon the patient than the drugs employed”.
Medicine is an extraordinary field of study, you meet all types of people from various walks of life, encounter different situations daily and the difference that a physician can make in one’s life is priceless. More importantly, when you enter medical school, one of the most important things that will be embedded in your mind during and even after you graduate is, prescription, prescription and prescription, During ones medical education, physicians are taught not only about the human body but to write prescriptions. The pharmaceutical business is a billion dollar industry, today there are so many people that are on a drug treadmill. In a class that the researcher is currently taking, there was a young lady that asked the question, why physicians do not use alternative ways to treat patients, instead of just prescribing traditional medications? The answer to this is that, physicians are not taught to use alternative medicines or to try to find the root of the problem to an illness but to write prescriptions to alleviate medical issues. In all fairness, there are some physicians that do want to get to the under lying cause of any illness but they are few and far between. Moreover with all the advancement in technology and medicines, what if an individual did not want to take medication to treat their illness? Then how would he or she be perceived by the medical world and society? The researcher did explore a few cases of individuals whom just refuse to take medication for their medical conditions or their lo...
... middle of paper ...
...Health and Hospital Law 30, no. 1 (1997}
Markon J. Fight intensifies over who acts for children. Washington Post. July 26, 2006
B08 Available at: www.washingtonpost.com
Miles, S. H. ‘‘Informed Demand for ‘Nonbeneficial’ Medical Treatment.’’ New England Journal
Of Medicine 325 (1991): 512–515.
Quinlan, J., and Quinlan, J., with Batelle, P. Karen Ann Quinlan. New York: Doubleday, 1977
Moore MT. Virginia teen fights for right to pick Hodgkin's treatment. USA Today. July
July 11, 2006. Available at: www.usatoday.com new health 2006-07-11- herbal-remedy Accessed December 6, 2006
Paracelsus Auredous Philipus, www.lizquotes.com
St. Jude Children's Hospital. Disease Information—Leukemia’s, Lymphomas: Hodgkin’s
Disease Available Dec.6, 2006 www, stjude.org
In modern medicine when an ailment arises it can be quickly diagnosed, attributed to a precise bacteria, virus, or body system, and treated with medication, surgery or therapy. During the time before rational medical thought, this streamlined system of treatment was unheard of, and all complaints were attributed to the will of the multitude of commonly worshiped Greek gods (Greek Medicine 1). It was during the period of Greek rationalism that a perceptible change in thought was manifested in the attitudes towards treating disease. Ancient Greece is often associated with its many brilliant philosophers, and these great thinkers were some of the first innovators to make major developments in astrology, physics, math and even medicine. Among these academics was Hippocrates, one of the first e...
This internal conflict is a result of the mistakes a physician makes, and the ability to move on from it is regarded as almost unreachable. For example, in the essay, “When Doctors Make Mistakes”, Gawande is standing over his patient Louise Williams, viewing her “lips blue, her throat swollen, bloody, and suddenly closed passage” (73). The imagery of the patient’s lifeless body gives a larger meaning to the doctor’s daily preoccupations. Gawande’s use of morbid language helps the reader identify that death is, unfortunately, a facet of a physician’s career. However, Gawande does not leave the reader to ponder of what emotions went through him after witnessing the loss of his patient. He writes, “Perhaps a backup suction device should always be at hand, and better light more easily available. Perhaps the institutions could have trained me better for such crises” (“When Doctors Make Mistakes” 73). The repetition of “perhaps” only epitomizes the inability to move on from making a mistake. However, this repetitive language also demonstrates the ends a doctor will meet to save a patient’s life (73). Therefore, it is not the doctor, but medicine itself that can be seen as the gateway from life to death or vice versa. Although the limitations of medicine can allow for the death of a patient to occur, a doctor will still experience emotional turmoil after losing someone he was trying to
Twenty four centuries ago, Hippocrates created the profession of medicine, for the first time in human history separating and refining the art of healing from primitive superstitions and religious rituals. His famous Oath forged medicine into what the Greeks called a technik, a craft requiring the entire person of the craftsman, an art that, according to Socrates in his dialogue Gorgias, involved virtue in the soul and spirit as well as the hands and brain. Yet Hippocrates made medicine more than a craft; he infused it with an intrinsic moral quality, creating a “union of medical skill and the integrity of the person [physician]” (Cameron, 2001).
Robinson, David. “Web Page of Deborah Tannen.” Georgetown College - Georgetown University. 28 Feb 1998. 15 Jun 2008
[Chillingworth] ‘Prithee, friend leave me alone with my patients […] my old studies and alchemy observed he, and my sojourn for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly propertied of simples have made a better physician of me then many that claim the medical degree […] What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine potent for good as it were my child […] I could do no better’ (Hawthorne 66-67).
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. 369-372. Print. The.
Doctors are well respected within the realm of American society and are perceived with the highest regard as a profession. According to Gallup’s Honesty and Ethics in Profession polls, 67% of respondents believe that “the honesty and ethical standards” of medical doctors were “very high.” Furthermore, 88% of respondents polled by Harris Polls considered doctors to either “hold some” or a “great deal of prestige”. Consequently, these overwhelmingly positive views of the medical profession insinuate a myth of infallibility that envelops the physicians and the science they practice. Atul Gawande, in Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, provides an extensive view of the medical profession from both sides of the operating table
In the Renaissance, some aspects of medicine and doctors were still in a Dark Age. Outbreaks of disease were common, doctors were poor, medicine was primitive and many times doctors would kill a patient with a severe treatment for a minor disease! But, there were other sections where medicine and the use of medications improved greatly. This paper is written to illustrate the "light and dark" sides of medicine in the Renaissance.
In medical school/pharmacology school, medical professionals are taught to treat severe pain with opioids. However, opioids should be prescribed with the possibility of future dependency in mind. Physicians often struggle with whether they should prescribe opioids or seek alternative methodologies. This ethical impasse has led may medical professionals to prescribe opioids out of sympathy, without regard for the possibility of addiction (Clarke). As previously stated, a way to address this is use alternative methods so that physicians will become more acquainted to not not treating pain by means of opioid
The right to assisted suicide is a significant topic that concerns people all over the United States. The debates go back and forth about whether a dying patient has the right to die with the assistance of a physician. Some are against it because of religious and moral reasons. Others are for it because of their compassion and respect for the dying. Physicians are also divided on the issue. They differ where they place the line that separates relief from dying--and killing. For many the main concern with assisted suicide lies with the competence of the terminally ill. Many terminally ill patients who are in the final stages of their lives have requested doctors to aid them in exercising active euthanasia. It is sad to realize that these people are in great agony and that to them the only hope of bringing that agony to a halt is through assisted suicide.When people see the word euthanasia, they see the meaning of the word in two different lights. Euthanasia for some carries a negative connotation; it is the same as murder. For others, however, euthanasia is the act of putting someone to death painlessly, or allowing a person suffering from an incurable and painful disease or condition to die by withholding extreme medical measures. But after studying both sides of the issue, a compassionate individual must conclude that competent terminal patients should be given the right to assisted suicide in order to end their suffering, reduce the damaging financial effects of hospital care on their families, and preserve the individual right of people to determine their own fate.
Medicine men utilize the use of herbs, ceremony, song, stories and prayer to treat each person individually. Medicine men’s healing beliefs advocates a personalized treatment plan for each individual’s unique health problems. Consequently The medicine man is unswervingly devoted to his calling for his entire life, both publicly and privately. Frequently he fasted and his thoughts would reflect upon the supernatural. Publicly his duties were numerous and onerous; dedicated children to the Great Spirit, carried out the setting up of the chief, conferred military honors on the warrior, held leadership positions for war, enforced orders, appointed officers for the buffalo hunts, and when planting the maize he decided on the time to plant.
“As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so do you have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doing everything, even the smallest, while remembering the bond which unites the divine and human to one another. For you will not do anything well affecting humans without at the same time referring to things divine; or the contrary.”
In the second article Julie Cantor and Ken Baum explains that individual right and public health boundaries remain unclear and want to offer a balance solution for this complex problem. The conclude that no the pharmacist should not reject and or reject the dispensing of the drugs due to the have an obligation to meet the needs of their customers by referring them elsewhere. They argue in this article “The Limits of Conscientious Objection- May Pharmacists Refuse to Fill Prescriptions for Emergency Contraception?” regarding pharmacists as professional and with their code of ethics that is seems inappropriate to question their right. However, even the courts have agreed that pharmacists have a duty of care. Professionals are expected to place the interests of their clients above their own immediate needs. They believe that a pharmacist understand their fiduciary obligations when they choose their profession (Baum, 2004). Next they argue that emergency contraception is not an abortifacient. They next objecting medications can affect a patient’s health and even place a heavy burden on a person who has no means for another option. Refusal has potential for abuse and discrimination. Final argument is if refusal is the choice then it is unacceptable to leave a patient to fend for themselves. The offer the solution of may have the right to object but, not to
Hippocrates was a Greek physician that left a legacy that existed during his lifetime in Classical Greece and continues today. His moral and ethical standards were the foundation of his teachings, along with his meticulous writings concerning the study of the human body. He firmly believed that poor health and disease were the result of a natural process that could be discovered and cured through careful clinical reasoning and observations. Hippocrates travelled throughout Greece teaching and describing disease symptoms, and taught doctors how to analyze and treat specific illnesses or diseases. Hippocrates’s accomplishments give him the respect from doctors and medical professionals around the world that continues even today.
...of the physicians, 71% of the nurses and 72% of the clerks).” Twelve percent of the staff have used or prescribed a form of alternate treatment, in the past. The studied showed that “Female physicians and female nurses showed a more positive attitude and were more frequent users of alternative medicine than their male counterparts.” Also while the Physicians only say a little potential in it such as its benefits for muscle-skeletal disorders, and migraine. The nurses and clerks say a much wider range for it use. The last thing that the majority of doctors and nurse agreed on was the fact that traditional medicine could benefit from adopting principles from alternative medicine. These doctors and nurses are people who work every day in hospitals and recognize the use of alternate health care, if they see the benefits then it show be made more available to the people.