A Surgical Conscience Essay

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FOREIGN SOURCE A surgical conscience may simply be stated as a surgical Golden Rule: Do unto the patient as you would have others do unto you. The caregiver should consider each patient as himself or herself or a loved one. Surgical conscience involves a concept of self-inspection coupled with moral obligation. It incorporates the caregiver’s values and attitudes at a conscious level and monitors behavior and decision-making in relation to those values. In short, a surgical conscience is the inner voice for conscientious practice of asepsis and sterile technique at all times. (Ross, 2008) Honesty is a major ethical standard. It is more important to admit that a procedure or activity is unfamiliar than to proceed blindly in order to save …show more content…
Excerpted from Wikipedia, conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgment may derive from values or norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that go against his/her moral values and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to such norms. The extent to which conscience informs moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of Western philosophy. (www.wikipedia.org) In the text books, Surgical Conscience is essentially defined as ‘the ethical motivation to practice strict aseptic technique to protect the patient from infection’. Even such a frank definition fails to convey the importance of integrating a strong Surgical Conscience into the fibers of every action of medical personnel. In order to make the concept of Surgical Conscience painfully clear, it could best be elaborated on in general, every-day actions or experiences that any person can understand and relate to. (Harrington, 2012) In an article cited by Harrington (2012), developing a surgical conscience require knowledge of the principles of asepsis,
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