Introduction to Ethics in Clinical Medicine

Abstract

It is common to think of ethics in medicine as an ossified set of dictates - or, alternatively, as an innate, intuitive skill that one either possesses or does not. Yet a look at how the field has evolved, the lessons learned, and the changing nature of the challenges faced make clear that biomedical ethics is a dynamic, applied, scholarly discipline. Moreover, biomedical ethics is a discipline rooted in enduring principles that relate to the fundamental human experiences of suffering and healing and may be learned and taught. Physicians are professionals entrusted by society to develop and use their expertise to serve others - to improve the health of individual patients, families, and entire communities. In this life of service, physicians as clinicians, biomedical scientists, and teachers and their earlier-career colleagues in training are called upon to fulfill the ethical standards of the medical and scientific professions. When viewed in the abstract, this requirement may appear straightforward and perhaps easy - the combination of traditions, rules, and common sense should suffice. History humbles us, however Imagine the complexity faced by the medical field just a few decades ago as it extended the boundaries ofiife in the care of extremely low-birthweight infants, established a new definition for brain death, developed innovative transplantation methods, grappled with fair allocation of scarce organs, and struggled through the question of the moral equivalency of withdrawing and withholding life support as new technology was introduced to intensive medical care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)