Ethics & Morals Quiz 2 Flashcards
What are health care ethics?
Medical / health care ethics is the discipline of evaluating the merits, risks, and social concerns of activities in the field of medicine / health care.
What’s the difference between morals and ethics?
Morals:
- Define personal character
- Concerns the relationship between people
- Made up of duties, values, beliefs and character traits
- questions for the person
Ethics:
- Systematic study of and reflection on morality
- Is normative (can be applied)
- Intellectual inquiry about what ought to be done
- questions for the society/the group
What are the four key ethical principles?
- Beneficence - To do good
- Non-malificence - To do no harm
- Autonomy - Self determination
- Justice - Equality
What is beneficence?
list three things
- A moral obligation to act for the benefit of others
- Our actions must aim to ‘benefit’ people – health, welfare, comfort, well-being, improve a person’s potential, improve quality of life
- ‘Benefit’ should be defined by the person themselves.
What is non-maleficence?
Traced back to the Hippocratic oath and closely associated with beneficence.
Harm can be physical, mental or to one’s interests:
- do not to inflict harm on people
- do not cause pain or suffering
- do not incapacitate
- do not cause offence
- do not deprive people
- do not kill
What is autonomy?
- Self determination or control of oneself
- Based on principle of respect for others
- Being autonomous requires the capacity and competence to make decisions which reflect our values and assumes we can articulate the reasons
- To make choices, we need all relevant information.
- Respect a person’s right to make their own decisions
- Teach people to be able to make their own choices
- Do not force or coerce people to do things
- ‘Informed Consent’ is an important outcome of this principle
- The right of an individual to choose between various alternatives presented to them
What is Justice?
Equal rights and equality of access to healthcare based on needs, irrespective of wealth, power, religion, ethnicity, gender or social class
- Justice as fairness
- Distributive justice
- Comparative justice
- Retributive justice
What does justice involve?
- Treating people fairly
- Not favouring some individuals/groups over others
- Acting in a non–discriminatory / non-prejudicial way
- Respect for peoples rights
- Respect for the law
- Social justice: determine what is good for the society as a whole
What are the four ethical rules concerning healthcare?
- Fidelity
- Privacy
- Confidentiality
- Veracity
“Loyalty, maintaining the duty to care for all no matter who they are or what they may have done” is the definition of what?
Fiedelity
Define Privacy
a persons right to remain private, to not disclose information
What is confidentiality?
Keeping information obtained in the course of the therapeutic relationship within the therapeutic relationship
Define veracity
Being honest, truthful and straightforward; People have a right to information that affects them; relates to informed consent.
List arguments for and against confidentiality in heralthcare
For:
- Data belongs to patient
- Accuracy improved by sharing of information
- Promotes transparency
Against:
- Layman unable to cope with data
- Opinions not facts cause anxiety
- Third party information
- Defensive health care practices
What are exceptions to medical/ health care confidentiality rule?
- Patient provides written and valid consent
- To other participating professionals
- Where undesirable to seek patients’ consent, information can be given to a close relative; but need to adhere to institutional and professional guidelines when doing this
- Statutory requirements
- Ordered by Court
- Public interest
- Approved Research (approval from ethics committee)
