Ethical principles Learning objectives To explain ethical principles

Ethical principles

Learning objectives • To explain ethical principles related to health and wellness tourism • To analyze situations related to ethics

Ethical Principles • 1. Respect for persons • • Autonomy Truth telling Confidentiality Fidelity

Ethical Principles (Cont. ) • 2. Beneficence • 3. Nonmaleficence • 4. Justice

Respect for persons • Based on a person's right to self-determination • Respect customers' right to make their own decisions based on their personal values and beliefs. • Appropriate information necessary to make the decision

Autonomy • The right of customers to make decisions about their medical care without their health care provider trying to influence the decision. • Patient autonomy does allow for health care providers to educate the customers but does not allow the health care provider to make the decision for the patient. • Autonomy requires that one act toward others in a way that allows them to govern themselves-to choose and pursue a course of action so that a person must be rational and uncoerced

Problems of customer autonomy • customers lacking decisional capacity cannot be protected by the principle of autonomy. • customers cannot require a health care providers to provide a treatment which lies outside the bounds of acceptable medical practice. • customers cannot demand a treatment that provides no benefit. This raises the issue of medical futility which is currently a matter of intense examination.

Truth telling • Truth-telling can be defined as the avoidance of lying, deception, misrepresentation • non-disclosure in interactions with customers or relevant to services • Manager should be honest in all activities

Why is it so essential? • inappropriate for health care professionals to lie because it precludes the customers from making an informed decision and providing informed consent • Destroys patients trust • Most patients want to know • According to one survey, 94% of patients said they “would want to know everything” about their medical condition

Confidentiality • Information a customers reveals to a health care provider is private and has limits on how and when it can be disclosed to a third party • Providers must obtain permission from the patient to make such a disclosure • Keeping secret when they learn about customers. For managers, this duty apply as well to staff, organization, and community

Fidelity • Doing one’s duty, keeping, one’s word, sometimes called promise keeping • Is loyalty to a person, organization, or set of beliefs. • One should keep his/her promises to others and maintain the trust

Beneficence • The act of doing good; helping others. • The Hippocratic Oath requires that practitioners of the medical arts keep their patients from harm and injustice. • Balancing benefits and harms

Problems of beneficence • The customers‘ desire to follow her own value agenda and priorities which might be at variance with those of the providers. • Providers are not acting beneficently if they are pursuing a course of treatment for the customers which is futile or where the burdens disproportionately outweigh the benefits for the customers. • Providers are not required to act beneficently toward patients by providing interventions which are scare resources • certain kinds of transplant surgeries.

Nonmaleficence • An obligation not to inflict harm intentionally. • Health care professionals must refrain from providing ineffective treatments. • Examples: Stopping a medication that is shown to be harmful, refusing to provide a treatment that has not been shown to be effective.

Balancing Beneficence and Nonmaleficence: • One of the most common problems arises is the balancing of beneficence and nonmaleficence. • This balance is the one between the benefits and risks of treatment and plays a role in nearly every medical decision (particular test, medication, procedure, operation or treatment). • The potential benefits of any intervention must outweigh the risks in order for the action to be ethical.

Justice • Receiving their "fair share" of benefits and assume their fair share of burdens. • Health care is a benefit that should be fairly distributed and taxes are a burden that we also try to share fairly • Giving to persons what they are owed, what they deserve, or what they can legitimately claim according to a proper allocation of benefits and burdens where equals are treated equally • Unless there is a morally relevant difference which constitutes a reason for treating persons unequally.

Problems of justice • Resource allocation for the terminally ill patients: • Highly aggressive treatments of those in terminal conditions may not represent the best expenditure of limited resources • Age in elderly patients who may be candidates for recussitation. • whether age should count as a morally relevant difference to the extent that resuccitation would not be given to patients of advanced age or, minimally?

Other ethical principles • PATERNALISM • An individual's action against customers’ consent in order to prevent that individual from self-harm or to secure • The principle of paternalism has been a strong guiding principle for healthcare practice. • Problem: principle of autonomy

Form theory to action Ethical theory Principles Rules Particular Judgments and actions

Conclusion • Ethical principles provide generalized frameworks that may be employed in the resolution of ethical dilemmas in our daily lives. • These principles may be applied to our interpersonal relationships as well as to our professional lives.

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