Practical ethics in clinical care
Author(s)
Milligan, Eleanor
Winch, Sarah
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2016
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The physical treatment of disease may be the core work of the doctor, but medicine is fundamentally a moral practice because it demands 'care' for another human being at times of vulnerability, frailty, and uncertainty (Jonsen et al., 2006). The need for ethical behaviour in healthcare is expected by society and demanded by our professional codes of behaviour. Ethics is about doing the right thing at the right time. Applied to healthcare, ethics requires clinicians to value and act in the best interests of another person. Yet the way in which individuals experience 'illness' varies between patients and clinicians. Our personal ...
View more >The physical treatment of disease may be the core work of the doctor, but medicine is fundamentally a moral practice because it demands 'care' for another human being at times of vulnerability, frailty, and uncertainty (Jonsen et al., 2006). The need for ethical behaviour in healthcare is expected by society and demanded by our professional codes of behaviour. Ethics is about doing the right thing at the right time. Applied to healthcare, ethics requires clinicians to value and act in the best interests of another person. Yet the way in which individuals experience 'illness' varies between patients and clinicians. Our personal values, beliefs, culture, and experience shape how we view our world as the provider and receiver of health services. This mix of individual values, expectations, beliefs, and training can lead to ethical tension in healthcare. In a practical sense, we need to learn how to approach ethically challenging situations, understand what is happening, and navigate the ethical complexity in a way that is respectful of the patient and the clinician. This process needs to be systematic and defensible. In this chapter we introduce two practical ways of addressing ethical conflicts in healthcare based on the literature and our extensive experience in clinical ethics case consultation.
View less >
View more >The physical treatment of disease may be the core work of the doctor, but medicine is fundamentally a moral practice because it demands 'care' for another human being at times of vulnerability, frailty, and uncertainty (Jonsen et al., 2006). The need for ethical behaviour in healthcare is expected by society and demanded by our professional codes of behaviour. Ethics is about doing the right thing at the right time. Applied to healthcare, ethics requires clinicians to value and act in the best interests of another person. Yet the way in which individuals experience 'illness' varies between patients and clinicians. Our personal values, beliefs, culture, and experience shape how we view our world as the provider and receiver of health services. This mix of individual values, expectations, beliefs, and training can lead to ethical tension in healthcare. In a practical sense, we need to learn how to approach ethically challenging situations, understand what is happening, and navigate the ethical complexity in a way that is respectful of the patient and the clinician. This process needs to be systematic and defensible. In this chapter we introduce two practical ways of addressing ethical conflicts in healthcare based on the literature and our extensive experience in clinical ethics case consultation.
View less >
Book Title
Psychosocial Dimensions of Medicine
Subject
Psychology not elsewhere classified