For this week lecturer was about “Ethical Dilemma” by Mr. Jaime. Mr. Jaime thought us about the seven ethical dilemmas: Dilemma of beneficence, Dilemma of Autonomy, Dilemma of Justice, Dilemma of Fidelity, Dilemma of nonmaleficence, Dilemma of confidentiality, veracity. These are seven ethical dilemmas which make people confuse like what is good and harmful, keep one promise or another promise and so on.
I would like to reflect starting from Dilemma of Beneficence. Beneficence is action which is done for the benefit of others. We can use Beneficent actions to help to prevent or remove harms and to improve the situation of others. For instance, physicians are expected to desist from causing harm, but they have duty to help their patients. Here, ethicists differentiate between duty and ideal beneficence. Beneficence can also include protecting and defending the rights of others, saving persons who are in risk, and helping individuals with disabilities.
Some examples of beneficent actions are resuscitating a drowning victim, providing vaccinations for the general population, encouraging a patient to quit smoking and start an exercise program and so on. So, ethical dilemmas on beneficial are situations in which the right action is not directly evident. There are a lot of ethical dilemmas met by health-care and other professionals include respect for privacy or confidentiality as one of the values involved. For example, a situation which shows an ethical dilemma is unresolvable and all the resolution is as good as another.
Besides, ethical dilemmas can be determined sufficiently and reliably by using a clear framework of analysis and guidelines for decision making. Besides, ethical dilemma on justice is a situation which involves a conflict between at least two moral imperatives in which to follow one means defying the other. For instance, police officers feel they must be faithful to their partners. If their partner takes money found on a drug raid, they should turn their partner in, which is unfaithful. They have the power to choose who to trust, who to accuse and so on. Another ethical dilemma is about Non-maleficence means to “do no harm” or avoiding doing harm.
For example, Physicians should not provide unsuccessful treatments to patients as these offer risk with no possibility of advantage and thus have a chance of injuring patients. In addition, physicians must not do anything that would intentionally harm patients without the action being balanced by proportional benefit. There are some medications, procedures, and interventions create harm in addition to benefit, the principle of non-maleficence provides little concrete guidance in the care of patients. In this context non-maleficence suggests that the dangers of treatment (harm) must be understood in light of the potential benefits. Finally, the patient must decide whether the potential benefits balance the potential harms. Some examples are stopping a medication that is shown to be harmful, refusing to provide a treatment that has not been shown to be effective.
To be concluded, it was very fascinating topic and I didn’t knew that there were seven ethical dilemma and today lecturer was very effective for me.
Comments