The Role Of Ethical Decision Making In Health Care

Ethical decisions are a common occurrence among health care providers. The ethical framework that lends itself to the decision-making process consists of four major ethical principles, autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. From a medical perspective, autonomy supports the individual’s right to decide for themselves the course of their medical care, including the refusal of treatment. The principle of beneficence stands to reason that medical professionals have to duty to act in the best interest of the patient. Additionally, the principle of non-maleficence maintains that medical professions are to do no harm. Finally, justice is the principle of fairness and equality. However, where children are concerned, the ethical principle
The belief is that parents have a greater capacity to make decisions based on the what is in the best interest of their child. Although, this is not always the case, and an ethical dilemma may result. When this occurs, health care providers must apply a process of decision making to achieve a resolution. For individuals faced with such dilemmas, an ethical framework coupled with a decision making model will serve to guide the process of ethical decision making. A model of formal ethical decision making will improve the quality of decision making and encourage prescribers to move away from the merely intuitive and give them a set of important factors that should be considered (Cooper, 2012, p.
Although she is not the child’s biological mother, she does have primary custody of the child which serves to further complicate the matter. Should her request for non-treatment be supported, the child is at risk for severe brain injury, physical disability, or even death. However, the biological father is a proponent of medical treatment for the child. This presents an ethical dilemma for health care providers as parental consent is needed for the treatment of a minor child. To further complicate matters, the position of not treating the child also stands in direct opposition of the medical team’s code of ethics for which they are advocates.
Decision Making Model and Resolution
Aroskar (1986) developed a consequentialism and deontology model for decision making (Park, 2012). The model consists of 7 stages in the problem solving process. The first stage in this model serves to identify the predominant ethical dilemma (Park, 2012). In the given scenario, the ethical dilemma is created by the conflicting values of the parents and medical professionals. One parent is refusing treatment, while the other desires treatment. Medical ethics would also