WHEN DOES AN ISSUE IN PRACTICE/RESEARCH BE AN ETHICAL ISSUE?

When there is conflict of moral values, beliefs, and objectives

e.g. between the health care providers and the patients.
When there is conflict of commitments and responsibilities.
e.g. saving patients lives vs. using the available resources “rationally”
When there is the concern that our patients rights/values are not respected.
When the issue in focus is related to justice in allocating the available resources.
Finally, when we, as care providers feel that we are not sure what we should do.

 Free Informed Consent:

Without a consent, either written or oral, no surgery may be performed. This is not a mere
formality; it is an important individual right to have control over one’s own body, even
where medical treatment is involved. It is the patient, not the doctor, who decides whether
surgery will be performed, where it will be done, when it will be done and by whom it will
be done.
 Disclosure
This refers to the process during which physicians provide information about a proposed
medical investigation or treatment to the patient
 Capacity
Refers to the presence of a group/set of functional abilities a person needs to possess in
order to make a specific decisions (Griso and Applebaum, 1998). These include:
-To UNDERSTAND the relevant information
-To APPRECIATE the relatively foreseeable consequences of the various available options
available.
 Voluntariness:
-Refers to a patient’s right to make treatment decisions free of any undue influence.
Influences include:
Physical restraint or sedation
Coercion involves the use of explicit or implicit threat to ensure that the treatment is
accepted
Manipulation involves the deliberate distortion or omission of information in an attempt to
induce the patient to accept a treatment