- Title
- Towards a proportionist approach to moral decision making in medicine
- Creator
- Walker, Paul; Lovat, Terence
- Relation
- Ethics and Medicine Vol. 32, Issue 3, p. 153-161
- Relation
- https://www.ethicsandmedicine.com/2016/08/ethics-medicine-volume-323-fall-2016/
- Publisher
- Bioethics Press
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- In the secular Western tradition, three frameworks are recognizable as offering guidance for ethical decision making. These are deontology, teleology, and virtue ethics. Four principles distilled from these frameworks (autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice) have historically guided ethical decision making in clinical situations. Our current era is characterized by both widespread technological change and widespread immigration. This has contributed to a pronounced value pluralism amongst both patients and clinicians. The understanding that each clinical doctorpatient contact has a basis in moral philosophy, which seeks to maximize the good of the patient, impels clinicians to seek a balance between a priori rules and empirical consequences. This approach is framed here as Proportionism. It can be put into practice via communicative discourse amongst those involved in the decision to be made, and has both applicability and merit for moral decision making in clinical contexts.
- Subject
- medical ethics; moral decision making; principlism; proportionism
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1328043
- Identifier
- uon:25810
- Identifier
- ISSN:0266-688X
- Language
- eng
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