Medical ethics concerns ethical issues in medical practice, including patient treatment, doctor-patient confidentiality, informed consent, and business practices. Professional medical associations have codes of ethics, and ethics committees assess complicated cases and new technologies.
Medical ethics is a branch of ethics that pertains to medical practice. It is sometimes seen as part of the larger field of bioethics, which concerns ethics in the sciences, and is closely related to nursing ethics and other areas of ethics that intersect with medical practice. Going beyond the physical practice of medicine, medical ethics also includes business and financial ethics as well as general ethical issues such as how to treat fellow human beings when they are in need.
The practice of medicine is designed to promote well-being. A cornerstone of medical ethics is a reflection of this, in the form of ethical standards that mandate that physicians work to treat or benefit their patients, while avoiding unnecessary harm and pain. However, some situations are complicated. For example, a very ill patient may or may not benefit from risky, dangerous, and painful treatment. This treatment might be considered unethical in a patient with less advanced disease, but acceptable if it has the potential to save someone’s life, demonstrating that much medical ethics is complicated by the specifics of individual situations.
Medical ethics also includes issues such as doctor-patient confidentiality, the need for informed consent among patients, and basic standards of behavior towards patients. For example, sexual relations between patients and doctors are often considered unethical. Business practices such as billing, volunteering, and the management of doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals are also encompassed in medical ethics.
Many professional medical associations have codes of ethics that they expect their members to follow. These include general medical ethics issues as well as topics specific to their specialty. For example, the American Psychiatric Association has clear ethical codes regarding dealings with psychiatric patients, as well as a more general medical ethical code that it expects its members to abide by. Failure to meet ethical standards may result in expulsion from a professional organization. Similarly, clinics, hospitals and other facilities bind their staff to codes of ethics.
Often times, medical ethics can become a very complicated and tangled web, especially when dealing with relatively new technologies, such as assisted reproductive technology. For situations like these, ethics committees are available to assess the specifics of particular cases, proposed research, and new developments in the field. These committees attract members from a variety of fields to ensure their debates are well balanced and include numerous perspectives on the issue. For example, an ethics committee might include several practicing physicians, a lawyer, a bioethicist, and a member of the clergy.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
