The Concept and Application of Ethics in Medical Science

Assignment 2: Literature Review

The Concept and Application of Ethics in Medical Science

Ethics is an important aspect in medical science as it encompasses a set of rules which acts to maintain a moral standard within medical practices. Although ethics is practiced in various other fields, it is quite prominent in the field of medical science. Ethics in medical science allow for the patient and practitioner to reach a common ground whereby both parties are able to reach a common goal without any conflict or confusion. The current set of ethical legislation for medical science ensures a civil and unbiased relationship between patients and professionals that both parties mutually benefit from. This literature review will examine the concept of medical ethics that is practiced (Harpwood, 2016; McGovern, 2015; Mentzelopoulus, Haywood, Cariou, Mantzanas & Bossaert, 2016), the application of medical ethics in various medical related fields (Chervenak & McCullough, 2009; Towns, 2017) as well as the implementation of medical ethics globally (DeMella, Donohoe, Morgan, Phipps, Drisaldi & Forder, 2017; Chao, Chang, Yang & Clark, 2017).

The first set of articles presented by Harpwood (2016), McGovern (2015) and Mentzelopoulus, Haywood, Cariou, Mantzanas & Bossaert (2016) shed light on the concept of medical ethics as well as its role in the medical field. Harpwood (2016) mainly focuses on the legal aspect of medical ethics and how it helps to maintain professionalism and a moral standard within medical related fields of practice. The article makes clear the responsibilities the medical practitioners bear towards their patients and stresses patient autonomy. The article also sheds light medical related cases and how they are judged, mainly stating that recent court rulings mainly favour the patient’s autonomy above all. Courts will review current medical cases by comparing them to previous cases and generate new policies if the cases are distinguishable, or adhere to existing policies if cases are similar. This article provides an overview of the legal framework, reasoning and processes, with context towards medical practices that is both comprehensive and contemporary, mainly due to the fact that this article is fairly recent as it was published in 2015.

The article composed by McGovern (2015) mainly focuses on how medical ethics should not be limited to merely the set principles that have been legally established as it partially falls within the purview of the medical professions as well. This article expresses criticism towards the concept of principlism as it downplays the fact that medical ethics is flexible, ever evolving and cannot be grouped merely into a set of fixed legislation. Furthermore, the article highlights the traditional understanding of ethics in medicine and goes further to compare it to the contemporary perception of ethics that has been applied to modern medicine by the General Medical Council (GMC). In addition, the article emphasizes the importance of communication and trust between doctors and their patients, and that it should always be maintained for the mutual benefit of both parties. Equal beneficence is highly important in modern medicine practice and is enforced through set legislation as well as legal obligation.

In their article, Mentzelopoulus, Haywood, Cariou, Mantzanas & Bossaert (2016) draw attention towards the fact that ethics in medicine has evolved over time. Their article focuses on how the traditional concept of medical ethics that favours paternalism, whereby the practitioner has the final say rather than the patient, and how the concept of paternalism has been abolished so as to provide rights to the patient. The article highlights the importance of autonomy in the issue of resuscitation ethics that is practiced in modern medicine, which is also applicable in other medical related instances. The article also emphasizes the importance of setting a global standard of ethics that is practiced internationally as various nations apply and practice ethics differently than one another.

The next set of articles by Chervenak & McCullough (2009) and Towns (2017) encompasses the application and practice of medical ethics in specific fields within the boundaries of medical science. The first article, by Chervenak & McCullough (2009), aims its focus at the application of ethics specifically in the field of perinatal research. Perinatologists possess a moral obligation to ensure equal beneficence for both the maternal carrier of the fetus and the fetus itself throughout the duration of the research. The article points out a key a benefit of the use of the ethical concept of the fetus being treated as a patient is that it diminishes the conflicting discourse of fetal rights. Moreover, the article examines the preliminary tests to ensure for utmost safety during fetal intervention surgeries, whereby procedures are altered for the safety and comfort of the maternal patient and the fetus. Perinatal surgical procedures are tested on animal cell models prior to being implemented upon patients in the research to test their validity and ensure the procedures do not have a deleterious effect on the patients

The next article, written by Towns (2017), explains the application of ethics in cell-based therapies within the research of Parkinson’s disease. The article highlights volunteerism, and the right to refuse treatment. Procedures of cell-based therapies carried out must adhere to safety thresholds in order to ensure the welfare of the patients. The patients, or their legal guardians, should be fully disclosed the risks of such therapies in order to fully consider their decision to undergo cell therapy. The use of reprogrammed cells have the potential for compatibility with the immune system but require the proliferation capacity necessary to generate clinically appropriate amounts of genetic material in order to ethically justify the use of said cells.

The following set of articles by DeMella, Donohoe, Morgan, Phipps, Drisaldi & Forder (2017) and Chao, Chang, Yang & Clark (2017) draws attention to the implementation of medical ethics on an international level. The article by DeMella, Donohoe, Morgan, Phipps, Drisaldi & Forder (2017) covers an online ethics training resource created and implemented within an existing course that is compulsory for second-year pharmacy students. A relatively insignificant statistical increase in ethical thinking was observed through test results of the Defining Issues Test Version 2 (DIT-2), however the online ethical discussion resource has provided ethical knowledge and concepts that would otherwise be foreign to many pharmacy students. The article claims that based on feedback from pharmacy students, improvements that should be added upon the online ethics resources should include an increase in contact time, an increase of group activities and discussions as well as more online modules for students to use. It is clear that ethics education can be successfully implemented within medical courses however more effort is needed to generate a significant impact.

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