Ethical Imperatives in Modern Medicine: An Overview
Ethics are an important untouchable resource that should be used in a workplace. Ethics are a set of moral principles that guide a person`s behavior and are a combination of social norms, cultural practices, religious influences and they show what is right or wrong, what is unjustified or justified in terms of human behavior. They serve as a tool to direct people on how they should behave toward each other, understand and fulfil their responsibilities to the society, workplace and on their everyday lives. In importance of ethics essay this topic is discussed within the medicine field.
According to consultant Lynn W. Swaner, ethics can be defined as values, practices and policies that shape choices that are made by people when making vital decisions. Decision making requires moral reasoning which is the process in which individuals want to find a difference between what is right or wrong in a situation they are in and to do so one must know what is it that they want to accomplish and be aware of the possible consequences they could face while doing that. Moral reasoning is used to attempt to do the right thing and putting into consideration the feelings of others and determining whether the action taken will not benefit other people while others are hurting.
Core Value of Ethics
There are four basic principles of health care ethics used in the medical field. For a medical practice autonomy, beneficence, justice and non-maleficence.
Autonomy is defined as individuals having a right of making decisions about their lives and making decisions about their health care. Autonomy requires a patient to think and make decisions about their health and making sure that in their decisions they take into consideration all the risks and benefits of a medical procedure that he or she is concerned about. An example would be a patient having to change his or her diet due to their health conditions as instructed by their healthcare professional.
Beneficence is an act of one showing mercy, charity and kindness towards others. All professionals in the medical field have an obligation to do right towards their patients. The professional-client relationship states that the professional should always favour the well-being of the patient and the interest of the patient too. Beneficence strives for the best care of a patient without any harmful act being done. Health care workers are to appreciate that potential risks must be weighed against the benefits of health care and are obligated to avoid harmful procedures. Health care professionals are given a duty to give care that extends to patient, colleagues and society at large and any professional who neither understands nor accepts this duty will be at risk for acting malevolently and violating the principle of beneficence as an ethic.
Justice in ethics is about equal distribution of benefits and consequences in social institutions and realization of rights of all the individuals. Justice is divided into four types which are namely, distributive justice, procedural justice, retributive and restorative justice.
 Distributive justice applies when treating people, it focuses on who gets the treatment and who decides what treatments are to be prescribed, procedural justice deals with fairness in the processes that are related to discussions of administration of legal proceedings. Retributive justice deals with giving punishment to lawbreakers and compensation of victims and restorative justice give attention to unintended consequences of one`s actions and show respect to all parties involved in a problem.
Non-maleficence states that there is an obligation for one not to inflict harm on others. This means that no one can kill, cause pain or suffering and cause offense to others. The practical application of this principle is for the physician to weigh the risks and the benefits of all the treatments to select those that are not suitable for the patient. This is the most important decision on withholding and withdrawing treatment, nutrition, hydration of a patient. A physician should have an intention to relieve the suffering of a patient by prescribing suitable drugs with no intended harmful effect or outcome.
Importance of Ethics in Medical Laboratory Sciences
Ethical issues play a vital role in laboratory medicine, it is therefore an obligation for scientists to follow ethical principles. These issues are divided into three phases which are pre-analytical phase issues which is related to patients` interaction, specimen collection, sample receiving and its transport. Analytical phase issues are related to quality control and post-analytical phase are related to reporting of results and maintaining of records.
Ethics allow workers to know what is right or wrong and it gives them relief as they get assured about whether they are doing their jobs in a correct way. Medical laboratory scientists analyse different types of specimens and perform different tests and giving reports to physicians. (Georgene, 2007). Medical ethics help to resolve disputes between family, patients and the physicians as they will guide on which path should be taken in order to take a good decision that will help the patient. Ethics help the scientists to maintain a clear conscience, it is obvious that scientists will always want to make sure that they did the right thing. Ethics helps avoid burnout at laboratories as physician who can describe their ethical concerns and use negotiating skills may be able to change organizational policies and avoid burnout.
Case Study
After the British Supreme Court lost the case, 10 months old Gad`s parents applied to the French European Court of Justice, but the appeal was unsuccessful. They hope that the hospital will allow them to travel to the United States for experimental treatment, which may bring some temporary benefits, but due to mitochondrial DNA depletion disease, their neurological condition may not change or improve. At least, they hope that the hospital will continue to provide their child with an advanced life support palliative care (breathing, nutrition and fluid replacement) or let him go home through life support and eventually die but the requests have also been rejected and the support has changed. Gad died on the following day.
Conclusion
It can be clearly seen that meeting moral standards can be challenging in the context of limited resources. The challenges vary from place to place, and solutions must be adapted to real situations. Approach these questions in the diversity of the policies of the national regime or perhaps the hospitals and labs will make it easier to provide guidance for increased ethical practice and staff training could be conducted on-site to ensure ethical compliance. Workers tend to constantly break the basics of behaviour and should now be careful when trying to solve problems as moral questions are difficult to unravel because they create dilemmas.
