Lesson 1

• In social need, healthcare providers express moral belief.
• Different factors that has influenced morality in nursing:

  • Social Need
  • Religion
  • Philosophy
• Moral

  • The prevailing standards of behavior that enable people to live cooperatively in groups.
  • Relates to what is considered right and wrong, good and bad
• Decisions must be done considering moral reasoning.
• Morality

  • Personal sense of right or wrong
• Morality

  • It is the human attempt to define what is right and wrong in thought and behavior, resulting in a system or set of ideas about, and the basis of any individual or community belief in what constitutes good behavior or proper conduct.
• Ethics

  • Concerns the needs and values of human persons in all matters of human concern including HEALTH; nothing is more human and personal than HEALTH
  • It is concerned with the study of social morality and philosophical reflection on its norms and practices.
• Ethics

  • Examines the rational justification for our moral judgments; it studies what is morally right or wrong, just or unjust.
• Moral Issue

  • Deals with respect for life, freedom, love, issues that provokes conscience; issues that respond to ought, should, right, wrong, good, bad and complicated.
• Moral Issue

  • Involves a dispute about the proper application of one or more moral principles. There are two common problems that we face in applying moral principles: relevance problems and conflict problems.
• Bioethics

  • It is the study of ethical, social, and legal issues that arise in biomedicine and biomedical research
• Bioethics

  • A science that deals with the study of the morality of human conduct concerning human life in all its aspects from the moment of its conception to its natural end.
• Healthcare Ethics

  • A.k.a “clinical ethics” or "medical ethics"
• Healthcare Ethics

  • It is the application of the core principles of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice) to medical and health care decisions.
  • It is the field of applied ethics that is concerned with the vast array of moral decision-making situations that relates to human health.
• The Person

  • (Biblical) Created in the image and likeness of God; differing from animals due to possession of spiritual intelligence and free will.
• Human Acts

  • It is an act which proceeds from the deliberate free will of man.
• Human Acts

  • Man knows what he is doing and freely chooses to do what he does
• Not all acts are Human Acts; for an act to be human, it must have:

  • Knowledge
  • Freedom
  • Voluntariness
• Knowledge

  • It is always a well justified true belief — any well justified true belief.
  • Of what it is about and what it means
• Freedom

  • It is the power of a sentient being to exercise its will
• Freedom

  • It implies voluntariness which is to rationally choose by deliberate will the object.
  • To do or leave it undone without coercion or constraint.
• Conscience or Voluntariness

  • It is a power of the will or of motivation to get us to act as willed.
  • Spiritual discernment.
  • The capacity to make practical judgment in matters involving ethical issues.
• Conscience or Voluntariness

  • It is the person’s most secret sanctuary where he/she is alone with God
• Natural Law

  • An ethical theory that claims that humans are born with a certain moral compass that guides behaviors
  • Example: Killing another human being is considered morally unjust, but doing so in self-defense would be morally justifiable by double effect.
• Civil Law

  • Refers to non-criminal law. This system of law has to do with interactions between members of a community, and it covers divorce, property rights, contracts, and other conflicts between people.
• Example of Civil Law

  • negligence
  • fraud
  • breach of contract
  • medical malpractice
  • marriage / family issue
• Code of Ethics

  • It is a guide of principles designed to help professionals conduct business honestly and with integrity
• Code of Ethics

  • It is a set of official standards of conduct that the members of a group are expected to uphold.
• Code of Ethics

  • Code of ethics could also refer to an individual's personal values or sense of right and wrong.
• Acts of Man

  • Actions beyond one’s consciousness; not dependent on the intellect and will.
• Unconscious

  • The complex of mental activities within an individual that proceed without his awareness.
  • Example: Phobias, under hypnosis.
• Immanuel Kant

  • 1724-1804
  • German philosopher
  • Was an opponent of utilitarianism
• Immanuel Kant

  • famous work: The “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781)
• Immanuel Kant

  • It is human autonomy.
  • argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality
• Deontological Moral Theory

  • Act done in accord with duty and act done from a sense of duty.
  • Categorical Imperative
• John Bordley Rawl

  • An American moral and Political Philosopher
  • His magnum opus: A Theory of Justice (1971)
  • Social Contract as a solution to Distributive Justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society).
  • Resultant theory known as "Justice as Fairness
• John Rawl Ethics

  • Equal access to basic human rights and liberties of citizenship.
  • Fair equality of opportunity and equal distribution of socio-economic inequalities.
• St. Thomas Aquinas

  • Proclaimed Doctor of the Catholic Church
• St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae)

  • Virtue denotes a certain perfection of a power.
  • Now a thing's perfection is considered chiefly in regard to its end;
  • But the end of power is act. Therefore power is said to be perfect, according as it is determined by its act.
• St. Thomas Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance