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Ethical theories and principles.

Ethically sensitive situations and issues are not new in today's health care practice. They are increasing in frequency and complexity. For practitioners to face these challenges, they must not only understand their own values and beliefs, but understand the tools available to resolve these ethical dilemmas when they arise. Ethical theories and principles and decision-making models can assist the practitioner in obtaining resolution.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

The place of care in ethical theory.

The concept of care and a related ethical theory of care have emerged as increasingly important in biomedical ethics. This essay outlines a series of questions about the conceptualization of care and its place in ethical theory. First, it considers the possibility that care should be conceptualized as an alternative principle of right action; then as a virtue, a cluster of virtues, or as a synonym for virtue theory. The implications for various interpretations of the debate of the relation of care and justice are then explored, suggesting three possible meanings for that contrast. Next, the possibility that care theorists are taking up the debate over the relation between principles and cases is considered. Finally, it is suggested that care theorists may be pressing for consideration of an entirely new question in moral theory: the assessment of the normative appropriateness of relationships. Issues needing to be addressed in an ethic of relationships are suggested.

Beneficence↗

Ethical theory, ethnography, and differences between doctors and nurses in approaches to patient care.

OBJECTIVES: To study empirically whether ethical theory (from the mainstream principles-based, virtue-based, and feminist schools) usefully describes the approaches doctors and nurses take in everyday patient care. DESIGN: Ethnographic methods: participant observation and interviews, the transcripts of which were analysed to identify themes in ethical approaches. SETTING: A British old-age psychiatry ward. PARTICIPANTS: The more than 20 doctors and nurses on the ward. RESULTS: Doctors and nurses on the ward differed in their conceptions of the principles of beneficence and respect for patient autonomy. Nurses shared with doctors a commitment to liberal and utilitarian conceptions of these principles, but also placed much greater weight on relationships and character virtues when expressing the same principles. Nurses also emphasised patient autonomy, while doctors were more likely to advocate beneficence, when the two principles conflicted. CONCLUSION: The study indicates that ethical theory can, contrary to the charges of certain critics, be relevant to everyday health care-if it (a) attends to social context and (b) is flexible enough to draw on various schools of theory.

Aged↗

Ethical theory and epidemiology.

The stream of ethics questions that arise in science seems endless. These questions concern how one determines responsibilities, rights, obligations, policies, and the like. But neither a "code of ethics" nor customary practice-standards may adequately justify a moral belief. An ethical theory is sometimes necessary to make progress on our moral problems. This form of theory consists of a diverse set of ways of developing moral concepts and giving philosophical reasons that explain, augment, and criticize the rules of social morality. Moral theory provides a basis for moral reasoning about problems; this reasoning is analogous to legal reasoning, where one appears before a court with a well reasoned case in defense of one's conduct. Moral theory is no panacea for our contemporary moral concerns, but it is valuable ally in the attempt to resolve them.

Epidemiology↗

Ethical theories and clinical practice. One family physician's approach.

Many physicians find clinical ethics unhelpful in managing real-life patient care conflicts. In part, this is because different ethical theories often analyze situations in different ways. I review several clinical ethics methods that I have found useful in different patient care situations and discuss how this eclectic approach to ethical problems is consistent with primary care in general.

Bioethical Issues↗

Ethical theories for promoting health through behavioral change.

The various philosophical orientations for changing people's unhealthy behaviors are examined. The ethical theories of natural law, utilitarianism, paternalism and distributive justice are reviewed in relation to changing people's behaviors. Finally, the health educators' role in behavior change is examined and it is recommended that health educators may need to limit the conditions in which they intervene into the lives of others.

Behavior Control↗

Ethical theory and principles: do they have any relevance to problems arising in everyday practice?

This review of ethical theories with application to two difficult obstetric cases will allow the practicing obstetrician and gynecologist to use these theories to help resolve difficult ethical dilemmas. In the first case a pregnant human immunodeficiency virus-infected woman refuses to take triple preventive therapy, with potential fetal harm. In the second case a couple with a quintuplet multifetal pregnancy needs assistance to decide about selective termination to effect fetal reduction.

Caregivers↗

Clinical ethics: theory or practice?

This article starts with a brief historical account of the ongoing debate about the status of clinical ethics: theory of practice. The author goes on to argue that clinical ethics is best understood as a practice. However, its practicality should not be measured by the extent to which clinical-ethical consultants manage to mediate or negotiate resolutions to ethical conflicts. Rather, clinical ethics is practical because it is characterized by a profound concern for the well-being of individual patients as well as the moral parameters of swift and urgent medical action in the face of limited supportive information.

Cultural Diversity↗

Animals, science, and ethics -- Section I. Ethical theory and the moral status of animals.

Section I discusses the moral status of animals as conceived from several theoretical and ethical perspectives. Though any one perspective might not be finally adequate, the juxtaposition of several ethical positions widens and deepens our understanding of the moral status of animals and of the responsibilities this complex status engenders.

Animal Experimentation↗

Aristotle's ethical theory & modern health care.

The Greek physician of antiquity - Hippocrates (460-356 B.C.) is called the Father of Modern Medicine and the Hippocratic Oath to which doctors of modern medicine traditionally and formally express their allegiance, forms the basic foundation of medical ethics. The tradition of Western ethical philosophy began with the ancient Greeks. From Socrates (469-399 B.C.) and his immediate successors, Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), there is a clear line of continuity, through Hellenistic period (from the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.) to the end of Ptolemic dynasty (30 B.C.) and the Roman annexation of Egypt - broadly post-Aristotelian and medieval thought to the present day. But the society has qualitatively and quantitatively changed since the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Society, today, is just a collection of discrete individuals, each with his or her own purposes and interests. Hence it has become almost imperative to apply the principle of autonomy to issues in the ethics of health care. The aim of this short essay is, therefore, an attempt to explore the relevance, if any, of Aristotelian ethical theory to the modern health care.

Comprehensive Health Care↗

The ethical theory of existential authenticity: the lived experience of the art of caring in nursing administration.

The purpose of this research was to conduct a study of the art of caring in nursing administration. By means of a phenomenologic-hermeneutic approach, the caring experiences of six nurse administrators were revealed and analyzed. Essential themes emerged from their descriptions of their experiences. Interpretation of the data served as the lens through which the expressions of the art of caring related to archetypical philosophies of art: living form, imitation, and expression. An ethical theory, Existential Authenticity, was uncovered as the unity of meaning of nursing administrative caring art. This unity of meaning embodied statespersonship, which was viewed by Plato as the highest form of art. Implications for the transformation of nursing administrative practice as an ethical caring enterprise by the manifestation of statespersonship are presented.

Ethics, Nursing↗