Assignment 07: Prepare a Working Draft

Curtis Hill

Assignment 02: Ethical Theories

HA3300D - Healthcare Policy and Ethics

Robert Kane

October 18, 2020

HA3300D - Healthcare Policy and Ethics

Section I: Two Ethical Theories that Align with my "Code of Ethics

St. Thomas Aquinas Theory

Although Aquinas was a religious faith believer and disclosed truth regarding the Christian traditions, most of his arguments do not need that readers consider the Bible correct to accept its evidence and conclusions. Instead, Aquinas seemed to reason that he could demonstrate some issues in a secular way, which Christianity elaborated (Lisska, 2015). Aquinas' ethical values include principles, rules about actions, virtues, and personality traits, which people consider excellent or moral. Psychologists still debate the primary significance of the two aspects. Currently, people tend to work more with principles, while ancient philosophers worked with virtues. In his publications, Aquinas developed natural law that prompts an individual to act towards achieving his goals. It also guides a man's sense of right or wrong (Lisska, 2015). Secondly, he wrote about positive law, in which the law of the government or the nation should always reflect natural law.

Frankl and the Philosophy of Moral

Frankl referred to logotherapy as “education toward responsibility.” In other words, the responsibility of living an individual, meaningful life. People also understand logotherapy as a measure of healing an individual with a psychological disorder (SpringerLink, n.d). However, it is different from psychotherapy because logotherapy methods are less introspective and less retrospective. It is a lifelong growth and learning process to find a useful life for human beings and emphasizes human experience rather than past life. According to SpringerLink (n.d), the meaning of life and being human involves serving a cause or loving a person, although loving a person is not clear in his documentations. Frankl's theory was about choice and that we as individuals have that choice. Like the healthcare profession, stakeholders should make the best decisions, involving research and the time used.

Section II: Theories that Support Autonomy, Nonmaleficence, and Beneficence

Autonomy is the principle of ethics that assumes respect for people and capability to activities that affect their well-being (Day, LDA & Stream, 2018). Kant’s Theory of Morality supports Autonomy since it violates confidentiality. The foundation of this theory is the theory of intrinsic value. However, where the utilitarian takes pleasure, regarded as happiness, including the absence of inherent worth, Kant takes the only thought moral value for its sake to be the goodwill. Those who people consider independent moral agents are individuals who have intrinsic moral value.

Nonmaleficence needs only the prevention of harm. Prevention may include creating a setting where safe practices for the management of patients exist (Day et al., 2018). Martin Buber's I-YOU theory supports nonmaleficence because it requires a safe environment for both the patients and the employees. The idea of I and Thou also supports beneficence, a robust principle that needs working beyond harm prevention in selecting ethical action. For instance, based on active beneficence, an individual respects every employee's personality (I-YOU association) and finds methods to nurture them. According to Richardson (2019), Martin Buber explains in his theory that the duality of relationships, including its extreme, their concurrence, may serve as the key to his mature reasoning on everything from his biblical faith approach to his applied politics. These actions are virtue though they can also have a positive effect. It is more cost-effective to do essential small things that build the workers' morale instead of paying the constraint recruiting and hiring costs from the business viewpoint.

References

Jill Day, B. G. S., LDA, R., & Sarah Stream, B. A. (2018). Ethics in the Dental Office: Autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice should guide your decisions. Dental Assistant, 87(4), 8-9.

Lisska, A. J. (2015). The Philosophy of Law of Thomas Aquinas. In A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence (pp. 285-310). Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9885-3_12

Richardson, K. (2019). Rethinking the I-You relation through dialogical philosophy in the Ethics of AI and robotics. DOI 10.1007/s00146-017-0703-x

SpringerLink (n.d.). Frankl and the philosophy of moral growth. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_435-1