Theories and Principles of Medical Ethics: An Overview

Abstract

 Clinical ethics entails the application of ethical theories, principles, rules, and guidelines to clinical situations in 
medicine. The practice of clinical medicine involves continuous intelligent and thoughtful application of general 
principles and concepts of clinical ethics to unique clinical circumstances. Therefore, it is important for clinicians to 
have a basic grounding in ethical theories and principles and to develop the skill of applying these to challenging clinical cases. One common approach to ethics is to begin with ethical theories from which we derive ethical principles, which in turn lead to rules (such as truth-telling or maintaining confidentiality), which then guide and determine our particular judgments and actions. Several general theories of ethical analysis have been proposed. The three most widely employed are consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice constitute the four principles of ethics. Medical ethics is thus the effort to determine what clinicians should do in complex clinical and research situations. This overview attempts to cover the basics of medical ethics from a perspective of ethical theories and principles. When situations arise in which 
what should be done is not immediately self-evident, a thorough understanding and application of these theories and principles becomes indispensable and central in ethical analysis to arrive at a correct action