Ethics in the medical field

Ethics in the
Medical Field
Naimat Bakare
Cami Gerber
Janiya Hill
Cameron Parola
Toneya Peyton
Elizabeth Starkey

Ethics in the medical field
What is medical ethics? Medical ethics is the moral principles that apply values and judgement to the practice of medicine.
There are five principles of medical ethics
Autonomy- self -governing right of individuals
Beneficence - is the concept in research in ethics
confidentiality - this when a patient have a right to expect that their private medical information be kept confidential.
Non-maleficence- the benefits of a certain treatment and balancing against any possible side effect that may occur.
Equity - respecting the rights and dignity of each human being rights.
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History of Medical Ethics Article
▹ In 400 BC, it was referred to the hippocratic oath and it was a code for doctors and their students was able to make conduct that
aligns within medical practices.(Zadi,2017)
▹ Thomas Percival is responsible for the modern codes of medical ethics and in 1874, the American medical association first drafted
the first codes of medical ethics. Later, Claude Bernard revealed that must be established on experimental physiology. (Zadi,2017)
▹ Due to the Nazi doctors conviction against humanity, the Nuremberg Code was created for research on human subjects and the
first rule was “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”(Zadi,2017)
▹ In the year of 1964, a collection of ethical standards for research on human cases called the Helsinki Declaration was formed by
the World Medical Association.(Zadi,2017)
▹ The case of Roe vs. Wade made access to secure abortions a paramountal right in 1973.(Zadi,2017)
▹ The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research was founded and the
Belmont Report was produced. It labeled 3 vital principles to ethical research with humans; respects for persons, beneficence, and
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How Ethics Have
Been Broken in
Medicine
Abstract: In the next few slides, we’re going to be discussing the unethical stories and consequences of those who have broken
HIPAA in the medical field. There will be a few examples of this and what it means to break the rules of ethics when it comes to
patients. The story of UCLA Health System employee, Huping Zhu, will play a key part in understanding these unethical decisions.
We’re also going to be using an example from Grey’s Anatomy of an extreme case in which a doctor falls in love with a patient and
risks her medical license to save his life. The next few slides will also include informed consent.

Doctor/Patient Relationships
This video is a perfect example of how ethics can be broken within the medical field. It shows a
doctor falling in love with her patient and getting mad when he makes medical decisions without
telling her. She tries to make his decisions for him since she loves him. When things do not go the
way she wants, she takes matters into her own hands. She knew that his LVAD was the only thing
keeping him alive. She knew that by cutting the LVAD wire, he would not have much longer and
therefore he would get a heart transplant. She put her personal opinions and feelings before her
professional ones. She knew everything she was doing was ethically wrong. If someone were to do
this in real life, they would never be able to practice again. (Rockifier, 2007)
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Most of us wouldn’t expect to be a part of a trial in sentencing someone for accessing our medical
records, or even hearing about it through the news or social media. For the first time, Huping Zhou
was sentenced to 4 months in prison, making him the first, for violating HIPAA. His “reasoning” for
doing so is that he had thought that UCLA, his work, was intended to to dismiss him for reasons
unrelated to the charges he was given. After that he had gone and looked at his supervisor’s medical
records as well as other coworkers. During the course of 3 weeks, Zhou had abused his privileges and
accessed medical records of high-end celebrities such as Drew Barrymore, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Tom Hanks. He was also fined $2000. This is an excellent way to show
how doctors, researchers, and other professions in the medical field abuse their power of patients and
can easily share and access people’s records (Dimick, 2010).
6 UCLA Researcher sentenced for breaking
HIPAA.

The picture above is the debate between government and the debate between the
opposing. Government is looking to have control over stem cell research and
want to force hundreds of people to participate, while others will say that the
government would just be killing innocent lives. This certain idea would tie into
medical ethics and open our eye to what is morally right and wrong.
7

Medical Ethics
This video explains the four principal ethics in the medical field. They rules that
they follow are guided to be culturally neutral throughout the whole medical
field, it also aids health care workers in decision making when there is an issue
with a patient that goes against the medical professionals morals. The four
principles are autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. The
principals have to do with what the patient wants, what the doctor has been
trained to do, what is morally right, so the medical professional can do no harm,
and what is right by the law. There are a lot of things that go into medical ethics
and they nt things. are easy to break. Medical ethics are also hard because a lot
of times what the patient want and what the doctor was trained to do are two
different things. (UK, 2017)
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Medical Ethics
▹ Medical ethics are a system of moral principles the use values and
judgement to determine how medicine is practiced. The law of medicine
isn’t always what needed to help patients.
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This picture based off of the end of life
law and policy. Americans in some of
their final days of life believe they have
no choice in when they decide to
peacefully pass. Morally we should be
able to give people the choice
surrounding their own life in its final
stages. End of life care should involve
families and health care providers but
public policy makers are also involved.
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The Parents Are Always the Legal Decision Makers
Here it talks about this baby boy who suffered from irreversible brain damage. With his chances of living
not being very high. There’s a doctor from New York who went to a court in London where he stated he
could have a cure that could save the little boy’s life. It also mentions that no matter what parents are the
legal decision makers of their children. That means they have the right to what goes and doesn’t go on in
certain situations. (US 2017)
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Military Medical Ethics
Military medical ethics and universal medical ethics
are not that differ, but they do have this natural divide due
to medience’s healing objective’s and the military’s
destructive actions. Due to the military’s roles and routines
that involve extreme dangers and unpredictability, the
medical providers must bend to offer the right and equal
care to those injured as they would to those in the civilian
world. Of course, the means must be justifiable, but
veterans get a little bit more leeway because of their
unstable environment that their fighting in.
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This video here describes and talks about how to properly ask questions about medical ethics. An example question asked
would be if there was a liver to be given out who would it be given to? Well it comes down to the choices of people you
were given. Whether the person was a poor or wealthy person. You must take in to consideration who needs it more for
their condition. Many ethical questions like those described in this video are what make it extremely important. (US 2017)
Major Ethical Questions and How They Are Asked
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This picture talk about the doctor
showing a example of the ethics they
have to follow in the medical field.
.

The Use of Ethics in
Medicine on Social Media15
In today’s day and age, it’s easy to get swept up in Twitter fights and Instagram hate comments, but how does it
affect doctors. Due to HIPAA, doctors cannot abuse their power by accessing patients records unless in an
emergency. The main goal for the code of ethics in medicine is to give service to humanity, but what happens
when this code is broken, not only in hospitals but online? When US Medical schools participated in a survey,
60% of these schools reported that there were incidents of students posting unprofessional content. 13% reported
that there were reports and violations of patient confidentiality. Of the 45 schools that participated, 7% of
students were dismissed due to unprofessionalism on social media (Chretien, 2009).

Why Confidentiality Is So Important16
This video talks about confidentiality and why it’s so important. The first thing is it builds patient
relationships. It also mentions that confidentiality can be broken. In this case it can be, especially
when there is a risk to a third party. Things like this can be very risky. Confidentiality is a highly
important in that you must always use your head at all times when dealing with this. If not things can
go bad real quick (US 2017).

Medical Ethics vs The Law17
Both ethics and law are normative structures and most of the times, the two connect very well such as refrain from harming
others. On some scenarios, ethics and law may conflict.Sometimes individual laws disobey ethical standards such as being
disrespectful to parents even though it isn’t violating any law. The defilement of an ethical norm necessitates various
endorsements than the defiance of a legal program. (World Health Organizations, 2015) .
https://keydifferences.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/law-vs-ethics1.jpg

Barriers in Medicine
A majority of healthcare providers have the issue in the complexity of information when giving it to patients.
This can cause a liability. It is sometimes hard to get consent because it requires some comprehensibility to
fully understand. A survey was done to see how many schools met IRB standards (Institutional Review
Boards). During the study they found that the schools had fallen short of standards for the IRB. This study
shows that not all schools live up to standards that can cause ethical issues with consent and create liabilities in
the healthcare field (Paasche-Orlow, 2003).
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Spirituality and Medicine
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A person has physical, emotional, social and divine extents. Overlooking any of these leaves the patient feeling
inadequate and may confine with curing. For many patients, spirituality is an important part of unity, and when
speaking of psychosocial aspects, their life cannot be ignored (D'Souza,2007). Spiritual beliefs and religious
beliefs always conflict with medical ethics. Reason being that religion is very hard to interpret and goes against
most medical help. For examples, Catholics will refuse abortions and Jehovah Witnesses’ will not accept blood
transfusions. Ethics requires physicians to not impinge their beliefs on patients who are particularly vulnerable
when seeking health care (Puchalski, 2001; McCormick et al., 2012).

Assisted Death and the Value of
Life
Assisted death is something that is still being debated in the medical field. Do people have the right to choose when they die? Or
should they continue to live until their body dies naturally? This is a very tricky topic that is talked about in the video. It is not
ethically right for a medical professional to help their patient die but on the other hand they don’t want their patient to suffer. There
are all sorts of things that people will argue on why it is wrong and why it should never be an option. Since this is still being
debated there is no right or wrong answer. It is up to the medical professional and what he/she is comfortable with and willing to
do. It is also something that is up to the patient and their reasonings behind wanting to do it. (Course, 2017)
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References
Course, C. (2017, February 17). Assisted Death & The Value of Life: Crash Course Philosophy #45. Retrieved from Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IsloHmKvWA
Dimick, C. (2010, April 29). Californian Sentenced to Prison for HIPAA Violation. Retrieved from Journal of Ahima:
http://journal.ahima.org/2010/04/29/californian-sentenced-to-prison-for-hipaa-violation/
D'Souza, R. (2007, May 21). The importance of spirituality in medicine and its application to clinical practice. Retrieved from MJA:
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2007/186/10/importance-spirituality-medicine-and-its-application-clinical-practice
EWTN. (2017, July 21). The ethical dilemma with Charlie Gard- ENN 2017-07-21. Retrieved from Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sxWvEEpd58
Henderson, D. R. (2015, January 28). Medical Ethics. Retrieved from Patient: https://patient.info/doctor/medical-ethics
History of the Code. (n.d.). Retrieved from American Medical Association : https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/default/files/media-
browser/public/ethics/ama-code-ethics-history.pdf
Hussain, R. (2017, Novemebr 26). How To Answer ETHICS QUESTIONS & Perfect Answer | MEDICAL SCHOOL INTERVIEW |
MedICU. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyOq9IGkfic
McCormick, T. R. (2014, April). Spirituality and Medicine. Retrieved from University of Washington School of Medicine:
https://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/spirit.html
Medical Ethics . (2018). Retrieved from World Medical Association: https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/

22 References Cont.
Michael K. Paasche-Orlow, M. M. (2003, February 20). Readability Standards for Informed-Consent Forms as Compared with Actual
Readability. Retrieved from The New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa021212
Mind, M. (2017, November 28). Medicine Interview | Ethics - Confidentiality. Retrieved from Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7DD7DuoqNc
Ortiz, L. (2011, May 14). Stem Cell Research: Good or Bad? Retrieved from Word Press:
https://alexortiz23.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/stem-cell-research-good-or-bad/
Rockifier. (2007, May 16). The Story of Denny Duquette: The Heart Transplant Patient. Retrieved from Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poh860kc3_Y
Thaddeus Mason Pope, J. P. (2014, September 25). Denying Others the Right to Die (cartoon). Retrieved from Medical Futility Blog:
http://medicalfutility.blogspot.com/2014/09/denying-others-right-to-die-cartoon.html
The History os Medical Ethics. (2018). Retrieved from Medscape: https://www.medscape.com/courses/section/898061
UK, J. M. (2017, June 3). Medical Ethics 2 - The Four Principles - Prima Facie Autonomy, Beneficence, NonMaleficence & Justice.
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Zaidi, C. (2017, November 10). The history of medical ethics. Retrieved from Medical Ethics Titles from Oxford University Press:
https://blog.oup.com/2017/11/history-of-medical-ethics/

Ethics in the medical field

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