Understanding Bioethics: Principles and Core Concepts

What Is Bioethics?

The term "bioethics" has been used over the last twenty years to describe the investigation and study of how decisions in medicine and science impact our health, lives, society, and the environment.

Bioethics addresses fundamental questions regarding human values, such as the rights to life and health, and the morality of developments in healthcare institutions, life technology, medicine, and the health professions. It also examines society's responsibility for the life and health of its members.

Bioethics involves issues relating to the beginning and end of human life, ranging from in-vitro fertilisation and abortion to euthanasia and palliative care.

Bioethics impacts every level of the human community, from local nursing homes to international conferences on topics like the Human Genome.

As a branch of applied ethics, bioethics requires expertise from a wide range of disciplines, including:

• Law
• Philosophy
• Theology
• Medicine
• Life sciences
• Nursing
• Social science

Bioethics presents difficult ethical questions for families, hospitals, governments, and civilization. Fundamental values are at stake, including human life, the dignity of the frail and elderly, just healthcare, bodily integrity, and the ability to make reasonable decisions.

Principles of Bioethics

Four commonly accepted principles of healthcare ethics, excerpted from Beauchamp and Childress (2008), include:

1. Principle of respect for autonomy
2. Principle of nonmaleficence
3. Principle of beneficence
4. Principle of justice

1. Respect for Autonomy

Any notion of moral decision-making assumes that rational agents are involved in making informed and voluntary decisions. In healthcare, respecting the autonomy of the patient means the patient has the capacity to act intentionally, with understanding, and without controlling influences that would mitigate a free and voluntary act. This principle is the basis for the practice of "informed consent" in the physician-patient relationship.

This principle affirms the need for medical competence. While medical mistakes occur, this principle articulates a fundamental commitment on the part of healthcare professionals to protect their patients from harm.