Assignment

Healthcare Ethics

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Healthcare Ethics

Summary-For and Against the 4 Principles (Huxtable)

In this Article Robert Huxtable (2013) highlights the four problems along with the four principles. He claims that the approach of four ethical principles is imperialist, inappropriate, unreliable and insufficient. The four principles approach to biomedical ethics discusses the points related to independence, benevolence, non-maleficence, and impartiality as the ethical rules which can direct the professionals at healthcare sector. Likewise, Huxtable analyses all these existing four principles and its application at the health sector. However, there are four problems related to these four principles. The researcher further argues that there is imperialism in the framework of four principles. The framework has failed to explain the multiple aspects of practices and its perspectives in the society. For instance, there are pluralistic communities in the current western world. These principals do not applicable to other schools of thoughts because they have different thoughts regarding ethics. Therefore, the diversity in culture suggests to adopt the Gillon's framework which proposes that there is flexible pluralism. At the same time, Gillon's claim reflects on the course between relativism and universalism. Likewise, Huxtable further complains that people might disagree about framework being considered imperialist, but they will not disagree that in many situations these principles are inapplicable. For example, if a patient is a young child, then the autonomy principle cannot be applied here. Although there are the supporters, who assert that the principals are employed in various fields of medicine and life sciences. The researcher continues with the arguments that there are also some chances of inconsistency in the framework. These principles do not applicable to identify and reflect on the moral issues acknowledged by the different authors who even support this framework. Different are cases highlighted by Huxtable, which imitate the inconsistency of the four principles. In Tony Nicklinson’s case, all the different principles of Ethics are pushing in different directions. There are times when all these principles cannot go in one direction at a time. Therefore, this framework can be inconsistent in many situations. Furthermore, according to the author, these principles are not enough to deal with all type of dilemmas. There are cases where these principles seem impotent to give some solid solutions. In such cases, these principles fail to assist legitimately, for example in case of assisted dying or application of genetic screening, the ethical principles are not applied. Therefore, some of the critics debate that these principles lack clear decision rules. Hence, the principlism is insufficient in many cases. Finally, the article articulates the claims over the legitimacy of the four ethical principles' approach. Critiques are criticizing the mechanistic applications of the principlism approach. At the same time, defenders come forward to support the beliefs as these are in between the universalism and relativism. However, studying both sides, it is easy now to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of these principles. Although, this framework is applicable to a diverse range of situations, but they are not very thorough in an application. However, it is not very attractive to the Clinicians, the trainee and clinical ethics committee members, whose work requires compulsorily ethical evaluation. It is because there are many roles performed by the health providers where the framework is insufficient to indicate the problems and resolved satisfactorily. More precisely, there are always chance for a judgment in cases where the principles of ethics are applied or complemented. The author is focusing the health professionals and health students who are more concerned about health care ethics. The primary goal of this article is to reflect on the debate between the supporters and critiques of the four principles of ethics. These principles are helpful, but not for these health professionals because there is the only opening point, not an endpoint.

Summary-Why Does Informed Consent Matter?

This article is written by Michele Goodwin, in which he comments on the human experiments as ethical or non-ethical. Most of the literature discusses the incidents from Japan. He further suggests that there is a need to distinguish all the medical experimentation through a more exceptional degree whether these are ethical or unethical. The moral dilemmas of bioethical principles speak of the concerns like ethical experimentation on helpless individuals, euthanasia, human trials to develop drugs, abortion, cloning and much more are very controversial to categorize as ethical or non-ethical. In this regard, the researcher opens up so many questions in the essay that what does this informed consents convey? However, governments and human rights activists consider these medical experiments as a violation or breach of human rights. By taking the example of the exploitation of the Chinese prisoners in the hands of Japanese Researchers. All the principles of bioethics are violated by medical researchers. Therefore, it is essential for the lawmakers, policymakers and healthcare professionals to learn from these past experiences when they are informing about the ethics in research and medical practices. Likewise, there three contributions made by this article in this regard. Firstly, it provides historical analysis and explains the medical experiments conducted in the past on vulnerable people without informing them. In these cases, examples are taken from Japan and Germany, where the prisoners of war were the subjects of the medical researchers in their lab. Secondly, it highlights through the case studies that how race, class, and status of a person influences the decision-making with respect to unethical research. It depends on the status of the research subject that how a scientist or researcher treats him or her during the experiment in case of informed consent. Thirdly, the essay asks the law informers and policymakers to use ethics to bring a change regarding the human researches and experiments.

Summary-Death’s Broke

The article written by David Schenck discusses the role played by ethics and the ethics consultants in intensive care units (ICUs) in the healthcare organizations mainly focusing those patients who are dying or died. It also includes the acceptance of the death of a patient by his or her family. At the same time, it also overviews the ethics in the medical field by accounting on the principles set by religion and secular pluralism. Further, the essay sheds some lights on the Modern Western medicine practices which are putting efforts to take the medical practices away from the religious communities. At the same time, the author offers three to four clusters to discuss "ethics consultation." The writer emphasizes on the first point that the role of ethics consultant at the hospital is referred as brokering the progress of death caused by technical error and natural death during the challenging cases, where different negotiations are held to communicate the causes of patient's death in ICU. Secondly, the ethicist is looking into the matter, and he or she has to decide regarding the secularization and religious influences in the hospital. Both religious and secular concepts are very important for the ethics consultant to inform about the "death of the patient" in a medical care facility. Moreover, Secular pluralism is also practiced in hospitals. In the case of "respiratory therapy" and "technical body talk," are considered as the discourses of secular language in the hospitals. However, the concept of religious pluralism and its beliefs enter in the medical facilities through the physical body. Therefore, both of the concepts play a significant role for an ethicist to express his or her view regarding the deaths occurred in the ICU. Borrowing the concepts from both of the pluralism views will help to ensure the ethical principles more briefly.

References

Goodwin, M. (2016). Vulnerable subjects: why does informed consent matter?. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 44(3), 371-380.

Huxtable, R. (2013). For and against the four principles of biomedical ethics. Clinical Ethics, 8(2-3), 39-43.

Schenck, D. (2015). Death’s Broker: the Ethics Consultant in the ICU. Society, 52(5), 448-461.