Health Care Ethics Essay

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Ethics in Health Care

The medical industry is filled with professionals who must be competent in many aspects of interaction in order to be successful and allow for patients to heal themselves in a positive manner. Professionalism is noted by a certain ethical attitude that must permeate the environment if the efforts of these people are to be successful. The ethical approach within the medical industry is extremely important due to the nature of the job and the reliance that normal everyday people have on the professionals within this industry to make wise choices based on the best interests of the individual.

The four major ethical principles of autonomy, non-malfeasance, beneficence and justice are ideals that may be rightly or wrongly applied to a patients healing process within the health care industry. The purpose of this essay is to describe the ethical issue of patient non-compliance with treatment using these four aforementioned principles. This essay will discuss how the patient's freedom of choice must be respected in all cases and by applying these ethical principles will help illuminate and contextualize this argument into a clear understanding of how ethics and medicine must coexist in order for the environment to produce the desired results and strategic aims are met.

Autonomy

Autonomy is the idea that each individual has the power and capability to make decisions and take action from an internal and selfish place. This idea is threatened however when people become sick and rely on others to help them heal. The medical profession plays a delicate role in determining if a patient can and will make the best decisions for themselves. This ethical challenge of ensuring that the individual's wishes are being addressed is inherent at all levels of the medical industry and it must be taken with respect and a level of importance that replaces the doctor's values with the patients'.

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According to Sciberras et al. (2013), autonomy "requires that an individual is independent from controlling influences and has the capacity for intentional action. The most common way in which a surgeon demonstrates respect for the autonomy of a patient is by obtaining informed consent for a surgical procedure. Noncompliance may be considered as a form of autonomy. A patient may refuse to comply with a treatment regimen or postoperative instructions after careful consideration of the risks of his or her actions." In some cases it becomes clear that patients do not want to be healed and doctors must respect those wishes if they are to follow a legal and ethical order.

Non-Malfeasance

Non-maleficence suggests that a doctor should not be inflincting direct harm or pain on their patient. This ethical tenet is perhaps the most impossible to attain due to the nature of allopathic treatment. Since allopath methods are rooted in the idea of hurting one part of the body in hopes to make another feel better suggests that modern medicine must harm, destroy and kill in order to save and preserve the larger body. This idea is rooted in violence and coercison and creates an difficult environment for doctors to maneuver within due to the impossibility of achieving this standard.

This ethical standard serves as decent guideline but fails to address the more important issues of treatment and healing within the medical profession. To help alleviate this problem in today's complicated medical world requires the doctors and other health professionals to place more respect in the feelings, opinions and desires of the patient when the request non-compliance to their orders.

Doctors are not gods and their opinions are very fallible especially when information is incomplete and insufficient to convince the patient to take a course of action that….....

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