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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bioethics | 2/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioethics | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:33:10.462736+00:00 | kb-cron |
Ethics affects medical decisions made by healthcare providers and patients. Medical ethics is the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to medicine. The four main moral commitments are respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Using these four principles and thinking about what the physicians' specific concern is for their scope of practice can help physicians make moral decisions. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology. Medical ethics tends to be understood narrowly as applied professional ethics; whereas bioethics has a more expansive application, touching upon the philosophy of science and issues of biotechnology. The two fields often overlap, and the distinction is more so a matter of style than professional consensus. Medical ethics shares many principles with other branches of healthcare ethics, such as nursing ethics. A bioethicist assists the health care and research community in examining moral issues involved in our understanding of life and death, and resolving ethical dilemmas in medicine and science. Examples of this would be the topic of equality in medicine, the intersection of cultural practices and medical care, ethical distribution of healthcare resources in pandemics, and issues of bioterrorism. Medical ethical concerns frequently touch on matters of life and death. Patient rights, informed consent, confidentiality, competency, advance directives, carelessness, and many other topics are highlighted as serious health concerns. The proper actions to take in light of all the circumstances are what ethics is all about. It discusses the difference between what is proper and wrong at a certain moment and a particular society. Medical ethics is concerned with the duties that doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers have to patients, society, and other health professionals. The health profession has a set of ethical standards that are relevant to various organizations of health workers and medical facilities. Ethics are never stagnant and always relevant. What is seen as acceptable ethics now may not be so one hundred years ago. The hospital administrator is required to have a thorough awareness of their moral and legal obligations.
== Medical sociology == The practice of bioethics in clinical care have been studied by medical sociology. Many scholars consider that bioethics arose in response to a perceived lack of accountability in medical care in the 1970s. Studying the clinical practice of ethics in medical care, Hauschildt and Vries found that ethical questions were often reframed as clinical judgments to allow clinicians to make decisions. Ethicists most often put key decisions in the hands of physicians rather than patients. Communication strategies suggested by ethicists act to decrease patient autonomy. Examples include, clinicians discussing treatment options with one another prior to talking to patients or their family to present a united front limited patient autonomy, hiding uncertainty amongst clinicians. Decisions about overarching goals of treatment were reframed as technical matters excluding patients and their families. Palliative care experts were used as intermediaries to guide patients towards less invasive end-of-live treatment. In their study, Hauschild and Vries found that 76% of ethical consultants were trained as clinicians. Studying informed consent, Corrigan found that some social processes resulted in limitations to patients choice, but also at times patients could find questions regarding consent to medical trials burdensome. The most prevalent subject is how social stratification (based on SES, gender, class, ethnicity, and age) affects patterns of behavior related to health and sickness, illness risk, disability, and other outcomes related to health care. The study of health care organization and provision, which encompasses the evolving organizational structures of health care organizations and the social psychology of health and health care, is another important approach. These latter research cover topics including connections between doctors and patients, coping mechanisms, and social support. The description of other important fields of medical sociology study emphasizes how theory and research have changed in the twenty-first century.