Mac Kee Moral Principles

Ethical dilemmas exist everywhere around us in everyday situations. Something as simple as picking up a piece of trash off the floor to whether you should use a previously written paper from a separate class for a current assignment in this class. It exists in reality and even on television shows. How, then, do people resolve these ethical dilemmas and how do they defend their decisions? Nurse Jackie is a television series impregnated with ethical dilemmas, especially in medical care. In this paper, I will discuss the ethical issues found in the “Tiny Bubbles” episode of Nurse Jackie. I will further discuss the ethical reasoning with support of ethical principles. In addition, I will discuss how patient’s autonomy and non-maleficence principle of bioethics plays a role in decision making. Overall, there was a difficult struggle on the ethical theory of and utilitarianism, with ethical relativism playing a huge factor.

One of the major areas of strength of the AMA Code of Ethics is the principle that outlines that the physician must “regard responsibility to the patient as paramount” (American Medical Association, n.d., par. 9). This principle outlines that importance of putting the patient first in all care aspects when working with a patient. Along with this, other principles set forth in the AMA Code of Ethics, while involving other aspects of care, state that the rights of the patient shall be acknowledged and followed during patient care. It is very important that healthcare codes of ethics are clear in defining that the patient needs to be considered first and foremost.

There are four principles of ethics: Respect for autonomy, Beneficence, Non maleficence and Justice. This four principles offers comprehensive thought of the ethical issues in clinical settings (Beauchamp and Childress 2001 cited in UK Clinical ethics Network 2011).

The American Medical Association (AMA) published a Code of Ethics for Physicians that includes a list of certain principles physicians should follow in order to be good physicians, practicing in an ethical fashion. This list, which was first adopted in June of 1957 and revised as recently as June of 2001, demonstrates some principles that are not universally accepted to be critical to the ethical practice of a physician. In particular, all physicians do not completely believe the claim that “A physician shall support access to medical care for all people” (Principles of Medical Ethics). Theorist, H. Tristam Engelhardt believes that the lack of access to care for some may be unfortunate, but it is not unfair and that this access does not need to be mandated, nor does believing it should be make you an ethical physician. In fact, Engelhardt supremely believes that by providing access of care to all, you will hurt certain patients that already have access to care, negating your function as a physician practicing beneficence. Engelhardt would retract this statement from the Principles of Ethics. However, this belief of and drive to implement access of care to all is critical to one’s job as a physician and it goes against core values of physicians to claim otherwise. Theorists such as Tom Beauchamp and Norman Daniels would agree that the universal access to health care is a critical component of the values physicians hold.

In the essay Defending My Life, author Geov Parrish tells the narrative of his personal experience with the medical field and healthcare industry regarding life-saving organ transplants in which he underwent. Throughout his narrative he brings up many key issues present in current day medicine that relate well to our BEST medical curriculum. The first issue involves behaviorial aspects of medicine and the importance of the patient’s perspective in care. The next issue involves the social and ethical dilemmas relating to the cost of healthcare and adequate access to proper care.

All medical providers have a duty to protect the health and dignity of their patients. Even if that is the intention of the provider, specific ethical dilemmas in healthcare may arise making it difficult for the provider to make an ethically appropriate choice. Wit, directed by Mike Nichols, takes the viewer through the healthcare of Dr. Vivian Bearing, an English professor, as she embarks on an eight-month experimental treatment to hopefully cure her stage IV ovarian cancer. As Dr. Bearing undergoes this treatment, ethical issues arise regarding her healthcare that compromises her well-being and dignity. George D. Pozgar points out that ethics is concerned with values relating to human conduct that focuses on the rightness and wrongness of actions, as well as the goodness and badness of motives and ends.1 It is clear in the film that the actions taken by the medical providers, violated ethical principles within the scope of health care such as patient dignity and respect, patient autonomy, and consent to research/treatment.

Task 1Managing medical ethics is a fundamental part of a Manager’s role. It is the responsibility of the Manager to understand the guiding principles of medical ethics and apply them within the organisation

Lisa Belkin is a women of her words. Ms. Belkin crammed all feelings imaginable into one book. Just as things seemed to be looking up for the patients involved she threw in a twist just within the next statement. This book is an emotional rollercoaster on all levels, but it was an abundant read. Lisa Belkin’s book is full of ethical dilemmas, provocative insights, indescribable doctor-patient/doctor-coworker relationships, and further more. “First, do no harm” is a principal in medical ethics its self. Medical staff are supposed to abide by the 4 principles of medical ethics, autonomy, beneficence, justice, and non-maleficence. Non-maleficence within its self means do no harm (which is the title of the book). The content of this book is based

Throughout our lives, we are plagued by the notion of ‘ethics’ or morals - the basis of our everyday behavior. The medical field is no exception, with doctors constantly reminded of the ethical duties they must carry out for each of their patients. An example of unethical doctors is demonstrated in Daniel Keyes’s short story, Flowers for Algernon. The story features Charlie Gordon, a man with an intellectual disability who strives to become smarter. He is a candidate for a new surgical procedure that is used to triple one’s intelligence which was directed by Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur. Although the procedure holds promise for helping a vast amount of people, Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss acted unethically by selecting Charlie to undergo the operation because they did not finish testing the procedure and because Charlie was unable to make a proper decision.

Dr. MacKee being aware his possibilities of dying, he starts to think from a patient’s perspective and views. He thought because he was a doctor, he had privilege over other patients. The film shows how the treatment he was given distinguished when he became the patient and life when he was strictly a

In the novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox, by Mary E. Pearson, an important message is the value of medical ethics. The author shows us many points of view on this issue. The two that are the most prominent are 1) that medical ethics are important, and we should have laws regarding them, and 2) that while medical ethics are important, we should still be able to save those we love, even if it breaks the law.

Once while in Australia for a speaking engagement, I was engaged in dinner conversation with a medical student. “What is the subject of your lecture series?” he asked. “Ethics,” I replied. “What is that?” he inquired. I took a moment to recover from my shock. Here was a bright young man about to enter a profession involving some of the major ethical decisions of our time who

Another ethical principle is non-maleficence which is to avoid harm. The picture portrays medical staff harming the patient both physically and chemically. One more example of how non-maleficence can be violated by this doctor, would be ordering a urinary catherization for the patient to prevent her from getting up and going to the

basic version, Mackie maintains, since, at first, the argument does not give a precise actual

The value of teaching bioethics does not have a long history, as indicated by Siegler (2001,10), who places the onset in the 1970’s, with little data to indicate its success. Adam, Diekema, and Mercurio (2011, 8) , when referring to pediatric residents, cite: “45% of pediatric residents queried in a 2004 study rated their ethics education as fair to poor (Kesselheim et al).” From an individual perspective, Dr. Atul Gawande, in his book, Being Mortal (2014), drives home several important points as a 50-year-old practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In his introduction, Gawande points to the weekly seminar he attended, “called Patient-Doctor—part of the school’s effort to make us more rounded and humane physicians”, indicating that, in his case, “the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise”. Furthermore, Gawande explains that his concept of medical school was about knowledge; of diagnosing, treatment, anatomy and physiology, and new technologies. Dr. Gawande, in dealing with mortality throughout his entire medical career, only truly learned the “bioethical” part of medicine when his own, beloved, father was dying. These are merely a few indicators of the historical dearth of the teaching of bioethics to clinicians, and leads us to the questions of whether there is a need for the teaching of bioethics, and, if there so, who should teach it and when should it be taught?