HIV Ethics Caring for Persons Term Paper

Total Length: 976 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

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In other cases, preserving confidentiality or entrusting the doctor with treatment-related decisions may be in the best interest of the patient and his or her family or community. Health care workers should carefully weigh consequences, in light of deontological ethics and institutional regulations.

Health care professionals working with patients with HIV / AIDS must be careful to temper consequentialism with deontology, to balance the psychological needs of the patient for confidentiality and autonomy with the practical needs of public health; or to balance the physical needs of a patient with HIV / AIDS with medical paternalism. Furthermore, discrimination against patients with HIV / AIDS is commonplace and often occurs inadvertently. Health care workers are obliged to confront their own biases regarding HIV / AIDS because to withhold adequate treatment is to violate a series of ethical principles including those based on deontology and on utilitarianism. For example, a health care worker might subconsciously resist touching a patient diagnosed with HIV / AIDS or otherwise withhold complete care giving. Health care workers are obliged to treat all patients with empathy and to not react out of irrational fear. A health care worker who does not provide adequate treatment for a patient with HIV / AIDS should be removed from the case, in the best interest of the patient.
At the same time, health care workers, however, might understandably act on ethical egoism: to take into account self-interest under reasonable circumstances. Suspecting that a patient might be considering deliberately infecting a health care worker or might be withholding pertinent information, a health care worker might choose to act out of self-interest before providing treatment.

Ethics related to HIV / AIDS treatment offer new conundrums for health care workers. Socio-economic issues add to the dilemmas already faced by professionals when treating persons with HIV / AIDS. Many patients diagnosed with HIV / AIDS come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The health care industry in general has an ethical obligation to help all patients regardless of their ability to pay: such a deontological perspective is an underlying feature of the Hippocratic Oath and without it, the profession would cease to be about care giving entirely. Therefore, institutions should base their politics and policies on universal care on deontological ethics. Lawmakers, too, need to base their policies on universal treatment, if for no other reason than to better preserve public health and to stop the spread of HIV / AIDS.

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"HIV Ethics Caring For Persons" (2006, September 15) Retrieved May 18, 2024, from
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"HIV Ethics Caring For Persons" 15 September 2006. Web.18 May. 2024. <
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Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

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"HIV Ethics Caring For Persons", 15 September 2006, Accessed.18 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/hiv-ethics-caring-persons-71678