Medical Ethical Principles

Truth – telling in medicine is a broad area and often encompasses several ethical issues. These issues include the right of patients or their family to receive information about their diagnosis as well as illness. On the other hand, the physician must balance his or her obligation to tell the truth against the imperative of - do no harm.

Ethics is a strongly culturally linked area of philosophy interrelated with what is considered acceptable human conduct. There are two branches of ethics; medical ethics and bioethics. The moral conduct and principles which govern practices of medical and health professionals falls under medical ethics, whereas in biomedicine and the health sciences theorised developments in the study of social and moral issues is considered bioethics(1). There are two philosophical principles within the conduction of health care research these are deontology and utilitarianism. Deontology is an approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions (2). Utilitarianism states that the most benefit

Autonomy is the right to make decisions for oneself and have those decisions be respected by others. This allows patients to have full knowledge and power of treatments and procedures being done to them. Along with having complete knowledge of what is going on medically with the patient, this principle enforces one to tell their patient any and all risks, benefits and alternatives to what is being suggested. This principle also allows patients to have the right to refuse treatment whenever they choose. Autonomy is one of the four main ethical principles that used when making decisions. The movie Miss Evers Boys shows numerous examples of how this very important principal was violated and swept under the

The community clinic has been a great experience to test our abilities and skills for the future as doctors of physical therapy. This opportunity helps students to get to know the strengths and weaknesses in real situations with patients. The community clinic is truly helpful and gives us, students, the chance of experiencing what our future jobs as physical therapy doctors will be like. The combination of practice, observation and feedback from classmates, professors and third year mentors gives a considerable amount of useful knowledge.

A physician has the responsibility to determine the legitimacy of all work injuries and to report its finding accurately. If a physician prepares a report with the intent to use it in support of a fraudulent claim and knowingly submitted for payment under an insurance contract, the physician may be subject to fines or imprisonment and risks the possibility of having his or her medical license revoked. Presenting a claim for an item or services based on a code known to result in greater payment or submit a claim for services not medically needed is a violation of the false claim act.

When it comes to the Guatemalan syphilis experiment and the Tuskegee experiment both were two unique experiments. Recently, the United States apologized last year for the experiment, done in Tuskegee which was meant to test the drug penicillin. However, Two years before that, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made an apology for the experiment conducted in Guatemala. With that said, the researcher rejects the case that a utilitarian could make the case that the Guatemalan syphilis study was more ethically defensible than the Tuskegee study, because the Guatemalan study had greater potential to lead to useful medical knowledge that could save many lives, while the Tuskegee study did not have any such potential (Bonnie Steinbock, 2005). I believe that neither experiment was for medical knowledge or served and medicinal purpose and that

In the mid-19th century, medical codes focused on issues such as not doing harm, not taking life, not revealing personal information, but the codes didn't mention much about telling the truth. The American Medical Association’s code of ethics did state that physicians had a “sacred duty” to “avoid all things which have a tendency to discourage the patient and depress his spirits.” The issue of not doing harm was so important that it was acceptable for doctors to lie in order to not do harm. In the past, telling the truth about fatal or serious diagnoses was assumed to cause harm to the patient, so physicians traditionally did not tell the truth to patients. But times have changed and the importance of patient autonomy is growing. Patients have

When I first joined a surgical practice in the 90’s. I was brought in under a unique model. Most established practices at the time, would hire a new physician as an employee and after a set amount of time, allowed the physician to buy into the practice for a large dollar amount making them a full partner. I was hired with the guarantee that after one year I would be made a partner and receive my stock certificate to the limited liability corporation (LLC) for $1. During the first 2 years may bass salary was less than my partners to make up for the decrease productivity of a new doctor and the increased overhead associated with a practice start up. Some may consider this a buy in of some degree. Above our base compensation, each member

The four principles of medical ethics include nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice. These principles were created by Beauchamp and James Childress because they felt these four were the building blocks of people’s morality. Nonmaleficence is to do no harm to others. Beneficence is to care or help others. Autonomy is to respect another’s wishes. These four principles relate to issues surrounding physician-assisted death in many ways. To begin, there are seven individual forms of PAD. They are the following; voluntary passive euthanasia, nonvoluntary passive euthanasia, involuntary passive euthanasia, voluntary active euthanasia, nonvoluntary active euthanasia, involuntary active euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. Passive euthanasia is an act in which the health care physician withholds treatment or surgery and the result is the patient’s death. An example of passive euthanasia is a cancer patient refusing treatment and the physician agrees with their decision, therefore the patient dies from the lack of intervention to treat their illness. Active euthanasia is an act in which the health care physician has a direct contact with the patient’s death due to the physician’s act of doing something to the patient in order for them to die. An example of active euthanasia is an injection of potassium chloride. Voluntary is when the patient is requesting assistance to die. Nonvoluntary is when the patient is not requesting assistance and their wishes are unknown

The argument regarding the selling of organs on the black market has been an ethical and medical controversy for decades. The problems that exists ethically is to be believed that putting a price on a human organ is materialistic, people may go to extremes to donate a kidney, and the fear of the spread of infections or diseases. Although the fears are natural, mostly because people have always associated the black market with a negative connotation, the ethical fears out-weigh the idea that donating a kidney can save a person’s life (Taylor, 2006). To make an accurate assumption about organs on the black market, both the positives and negatives need to be evaluated, this paper analyzes both positions regarding the issue and proposes that

29. In your opinion what responsibilities, if any, does a physician or other health care practitioner have toward difficult family members or other third parties who interfere with a patient’s medical care?

Ethics has many terms and one of the more common terms is of Autonomy. The definition of autonomy can refer to an individual’s freedom or one person's right to make decisions without being coerced to do so. A good example of autonomy in the medical field includes the right for a patient to have fair medical treatment. (Crocker)

This aids in defending subsequential decisions that may cause to be an issue, where the solution of ethics can be used as logical thinking(Lementani, 1999). In doing so, both the patient and the healthcare professional would benefit, when following the principle-based ethics, which include the 7 basic ethics for

You have done a wonderful job interpreting ethics. The application of ethics in the medical field is a must because many situations are in the gray area and require the use of ethics to make final decisions. Ethics are necessary to utilize on a daily basis when working with the public and fellow healthcare workers. In this litigious society, medical mal-practice suites are abundant, many people are looking to make money off of any negative action of the professional world. It is unfortunate for our generation because it causes our duties as medical professionals to become overly scrutinized against. In relation to living in a litigious society, I believe that as medical coders, we would need to follow the duty-based ethic first.

Professionals in every field are always confronted with some kind of ethical issues. It has however been noted that these ethical issues become high in magnitude and extent when public officials are involved. Due to the involvement of human life, an industry like healthcare holds ethics in highest regard. Even though these healthcare practitioners are highly trained to deal with issues of these kinds, their decisions can sometimes have a lasting impact on their professional and personal lives (Edwards 2009).