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Ethics for the Pennsylvania Physical Therapy Professional: Summary
Hedonism: Maximizes intellectual pleasure without worry regarding the future. The Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Utilitarianism: “The greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Normative Ethics: Seeks to understand how Autonomy: Moral right to make choices and decisions about a course of action and allowing and enabling patients to make their own choices. Nonmaleficence: Providers should do no harm. Harm encompasses a range extending beyond physical or psychological harm including harm to reputation, liberty, or property. a person should act. Ethical Principles Beneficence: Duty to prevent harm to others, remove harm from others, and promote good. This obligation ends where action can bring harm to oneself. Justice: Fairly distributing burdens and benefits in society and focusing on who should get the resources. Informed Consent and Veracity: Presenting patients with details, benefits, risks, and potential risks of proposed interventions. Consent relies on veracity—obligation to speak and act truthfully. Confidentiality: Obligation to limit access to information gathered during treatment. Clinicians must keep information strictly between the therapist and the patient. There are certain laws that mandate breach of confidentiality to protect citizens. Fidelity: Moral duty to keep promises and commitments. Patients expect therapists to keep explicit and implicit promises. Duty: Obligations to others in society. Duties exist because of the nature of the relationship between the parties.
INTRODUCTION THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
Ethics Defined
Ethics are not: • Having a good feeling about words or actions LEARNING TIP! Ethics are the moral principles we adopt to guide our actions and our behavior. These principles are widely categorized as good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable. Ethics are doing and saying the right thing. “Professionally accepted standards of personal and business behavior, values and guiding principles. Codes of professional ethics are often established by professional organizations to help guide members in performing their job functions according to sound and consistent ethical principles” (http://wwwbusinessdictionary.com) Ethical Models Four essential features that should be in every ethical model for clinicians are: • Doing what the law says • A set of religious beliefs • Following society’s protocol Professional Ethics
1. Medical indications 2. Patient preferences 3. Quality of life issues 4. Contextual features Ethical Philosophies Categorical
Imperative: Promotes unconditional execution, where right is right and must by all means be done under whatever circumstances.
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