In bioethics, principles guide clinical decision-making. Healthcare professionals apply these principles to provide the best care to their patients. Successfully applying ethics in professional practice is essential to achieving positive results in treatment planning.
In a previous post, I had mentioned the interconnection between the mind and body and how the acknowledgment of the metaphysical, even if it is only for the patient, guides the physician into expanding their moral thinking. Accepting the possibility of something more than oneself can open the door to our moral compass. With an engaged moral compass in clinical discussions or decision-making, bioethics begins to guide the physician. Beauchamp and Childress proposed the fundamental principles of bioethics that physicians use daily in their practices [Principles of Biomedical Ethics: Marking Its Fortieth Anniversary – PubMed]. These principles—non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice — guide physicians to stay true to a moral compass in clinical practice.
When bioethics guides clinicians’ decision-making, they ensure a stronger patient-physician relationship, where trust becomes the center of treatment. Patients who trust their physicians are more willing to follow treatment and recommendations, resulting in a more effective treatment plan and quicker results. Trusting the physician is the cornerstone of effective treatment.
Only when trust is established will a patient be willing to, at least, listen to their healthcare provider. When we have established trust with our patient, that is when our work has meaning. Otherwise, consider it a consultation or walk-in service. No one—whether seeking information or not—needs to fulfill the physician’s recommendations, as the physician provides the initial information requests. It is the patient’s health; therefore, it is the patient’s autonomous right to decide whether to follow through with their health management. Healthcare professionals understand this as the principle of autonomy, which gives the patient authority over their health. This principle, the principle of autonomy, is the initial establishment of trust in the patient-physician relationship, since it is only by respecting the patient’s dignity that a successful engagement with the patient’s autonomy can be achieved.
Since the physician has access to the information and holds a position of authority, it is their responsibility to establish a trusting patient-physician relationship. Patients can then begin to trust that their physician is non-maleficent and/or beneficent and has their best interests in mind.
Physicians who utilize ethical principles to achieve higher-quality care ensure that the patient’s health is the primary concern of the caring physician. And when patients receive support from healthcare workers, they become more willing to take responsibility for their treatment.
I believe that there is no conspiracy on the part of the healthcare system to exploit and keep citizens ill; the goal of the healthcare system is to prevent patients from staying sick for too long. It is a significant financial burden for patients to require long-term care. Cost reduction in healthcare can be achieved by establishing a more prophylactic approach to patient care. To achieve this, the focus would need to be on acquiring soft skills, such as moral reasoning, for physicians and healthcare workers. Patients need to listen to and trust basic prophylactic measures, which take time to show results, and start to move away from polypharmacological treatments. However, this will require rebuilding trust with patients. This result necessitates physicians’ motivation and effort to implement a gentler approach to patient management approach.
Although I have already touched upon the principle of autonomy, other principles are equally important. These principles can be viewed as moral forces that pull on a personal internal perception of the situation. How they view their situation determines which force needs more of a ‘pull’ by the clinician, so to speak. These forces are the principles where autonomy is the only force the individual can control, so I advocate for patient autonomy. No one truly knows how the individual is experiencing their illness; only the individual themselves can determine this. However, by acknowledging and respecting the individual’s dignity and thus autonomy, the forces of beneficence and non-maleficence are truly used in the clinician’s decision-making. As for the principle of justice, justice is the outcome of the decision-making process. Justice is achieved when a balance is struck among all three principles.
Ethical Modernity 
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