Paternalism In Health Care

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For many years now, humans have struggled to answer questions about the meaning of life and how to properly conduct themselves. Ethics are principles created to guide us from what is right to what is not. Ethics help health care professionals deal with difficult and complex problems that lack easy answers. The important of ethics in the principle of health care has been recognized for many years. Health care employees have a significant impact on human life. Practice of health care involves life and death issues, which are often at the heart of ethical questions.
Four of the major ethical/moral principle which will be compared and contrasted throughout this paper are autonomy, beneficence, non-malfeasance, and paternalism.
Autonomy is a concept …show more content…
principle of non-maleficence deals with doing no-harm to patients. Health care professionals must ensure that the care being provided does not harm or bring unnecessary risks to patients. What exactly do I mean when I say "harm", it means pain and suffering patient goes through at all levels. Not only that, but harm can be caused physically, emotionally, or financially in patients or community. To avoid such delimas, health care providers must provide patients with information needed regarding patient meds, condition, or treatment so patients can make informed decitions without exposeing themselves to potential harm or risk of diseases or injuries. Sometimes as in the case of flu vaccinations, instant and momentary pain is required in order to gain long-term benefits. However; this can be reversed as to when instant benefit can result in a long-term negative results. For instance, providing sevior pain relief to patients who are very ill even though it can result in physical faliure, which can result in death. some physicians feel that all the patients that come to their office should recive some sort of prescription befor leaveing their office. Now according to the non-malificence principle, is that really necessary to priscribe patients medications just because they came into the doctor's office. What about the side-effects of the meds being prescribed? And is that really benefiting the patient. Principle of beneficence and non-malificence are at opposite ends of the same process. For example[AN ETHICAL ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL CODES IN HEALTH AND MEDICAL CARE] "currently the leading cause of death for young people in America is traffic accidents. If someone drives after consuming too much alcohol, the intoxicated individual is putting others into harm's way, and that individual is treated by the law as
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