BIOETHICS

• Deontological ethics - focused on adherence to independent moral rules or duties
• Teleological ethics - focused on the consequences which any action might have; ends justifying the means
• Virtue ethics - focus on helping people develop good character traits, such as kindness and generosity,which allow a person to make the correct decisions later in life
• Ethics in medicine - concerned with the obligations of the doctors and thehospital to the patient along with other healthprofessionals and society
• FOUR MAJOR ETHICAL PRINCIPLES• Justice • Autonomy • Beneficence • Non-maleficence
• autonomy - The act of respecting the decisions of others
• beneficence - doing an action that benefits others, Intention of doing good for the patient
• non-maleficence : The 'do no harm' principle
• justice : 'Give to each that which is his due'
• PROBLEMS IN MEDICAL ETHICS- IGNORANCE • NEGLIGENCE
• IGNORANCE : lack of technical or theoretical knowledge in theact of doing work
• NEGLIGENCE : the failure to observe, for the protection of theinterests of another person, that degree of care,precaution, and vigilance which the circumstancesjustly demand, whereby such other person suffersinjury
• ELEMENTS OF NEGLIGENCE

  • a duty was owed

  • the duty was not met: breach

  • injury or harm was done

  • failure to meet the duty owed resulted to the injury:

  proximate cause
• RES IPSA LOQUITUR: allows the mere existence of an injury to justify a presumption of negligence onthe part of the person who controls the instrument causing the injury
• PROXIMATE CAUSE - 'the cause which produces the injury and without which the resultwould not have occurred'