Health Care Ethics Study Guide

“Ethics, Professional Ethics,and Health Care Ethics”

The main topic of Chapter 1 “Ethics, Professional Ethics, and Health Care Ethics” is health care ethics and how it applies to the health care fields and the ethical decisions made by patients. The chapter begins by giving us an insight in ethics as a branch of philosophy. Philosophy discusses the capabilities of the human mind relating to the nature of reason and reality. Ethics determines if human actions may be considered right or wrong. The chapter states that ethics does attack religion but rather, “ethics and religion consider the same problems and share important insights”. Ethics is also sometimes compared to law but they differ in that law involves public goods and individual rights

The different theories include consequentialism, Kantian deontologism, natural law, and virtue ethics. Consequentialism sees rightness or wrongness of our actions based on the consequences of them. Consequentialism includes utilitarianism, stating that one should act as to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In act-utilitarianism, an individual evaluates their actions based on the common good of the people involved. Rule-utilitarianism claims certain rules should be followed to produce the greatest common good for everyone involved. The Kantian dentologism theory describes that an action can be described as good and what should be done based on certain characteristics such as the moral law. An example of this is the saying “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Another theory is natural law that focuses on human nature and that good and bad decisions guide human action toward human fulfillment. Virtue ethics involves many different factors such as values, right reason, emotional disposition, cultural factors, and