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Nursing ethics is a branch of applied ethics that concerns itself with activities in the field of nursing. Nursing ethics shares many principles with medical ethics, such as beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect for autonomy. It can be distinguished by its emphasis on relationships, human dignity and collaborative care.
Medical ethics is an applied branch of ethics which analyzes the practice of clinical medicine and related scientific research. [1] Medical ethics is based on a set of values that professionals can refer to in the case of any confusion or conflict. These values include the respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. [2]
Principlism is an applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas centering the application of certain ethical principles. This approach to ethical decision-making has been prevalently adopted in various professional fields, largely because it sidesteps complex debates in moral philosophy at the theoretical level.
Like medical ethics, nursing ethics is very narrow in its focus, especially when compared to the expansive field of bioethics. For the most part, "nursing ethics can be defined as having a two-pronged meaning," whereby it is "the examination of all kinds of ethical and bioethical issues from the perspective of nursing theory and practice."
Other topics in medical ethics include medical confidentiality, informed consent, research on human beings, organ transplantation, and access to healthcare. [146] Harm done to animals is a particular concern in animal ethics, for example, as a result of intensive animal farming. Animal ethics examines how humans should treat other animals.
One example illustrating this concept is the trolley problem. Morality and ethical theory allows for judging relative costs, so in the case when a harm to be inflicted in violating #1 is negligible and the harm prevented or benefit gained in #2–4 is substantial, then it may be acceptable to cause one harm to gain another benefit.
Example of informed consent document from the PARAMOUNT trial. Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics, medical law, media studies, and other fields, that a person must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about accepting risk, such as their medical care.
Examples of this would be the topic of equality in medicine, the intersection of cultural practices and medical care, ethical distribution of healthcare resources in pandemics, [citation needed] [19] and issues of bioterrorism. [20] Medical ethical concerns frequently touch on matters of life and death.