Principles of Ethics 445N

Ethics and Moral Standpoint in Opioid Crisis 8

Principles of Ethics

Chamberlain University College of Nursing

ETHC445 Principles of Ethics

November 29, 2020

Ethics and Moral Standpoint in Opioid Crisis

Various organizations have implemented strategies to increase attention to the ethics of the opioid epidemic. Even though the aspect of ethics in the opioid pandemic has not been sufficiently debated on, they are important since they dictate and guide for what ought to be practiced. Therefore, these strategies must be central to all the regulations laid in fighting the crisis. These strategies particularly major on the aspects of prescription issues and clinical regulations and other related issues that are practiced by healthcare organizations. The issue of morally responsible prescribing is essentially vital for clinicians. However, the personal and communal aspects surrounding the ethical issue is that the public should understand what the clinicians, physicians, doctors and health organizations owe them regarding quality care National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017).

Additionally, the ethical aspects surrounding the crisis should not only be addressed in the treatment aspect of it, but also the general public level of awareness. Therefore, there are various crucial questions that the general public must understand. What obligations do pharmaceutical companies have to society due to their role in instigating the crisis? How does society address the underlying factors that influence drug use and addiction? How will pharmaceutical companies and health-organizations figure out how to respond to the crisis without harming pain patients? One of the major aspects in the public health emergency that interlinks to the opioid crisis and its ethical element is multi-sector involvement. This is a strategy that holds greater benefits in addressing the crisis due to its wide, far-reaching impacts across health-sector and society.

Ethical Position Using Kantian Ethics

Kant suggests that every individual has an imperfect duty inclined towards self-development. Immanuel Kant ethics offers potential and beneficial information to medical training and education, which can be interlinked with the opioid issue. Using Kant’s categorical imperative aspect that suggests "to act in a manner that you treat humanity.. never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end” (Siegler, 2019). In his concept, he emphasizes the respect of patients and dignity; at the same time, he argues that the ethical foundation for the connection between the patient and the doctors. Kant’s idea is more inclined and helpful in the ethical foundation and development of physicians and promoting the medical culture to educate society on the impacts of drug abuse.

To address the debate and the challenges of the opioid crisis in a society based on Kantian ethics, physicians need to be educated on comparative practical ethics. This kind of education is beneficial since it focuses on the need to approach problems in various ethical standpoints that include virtue ethics and utilitarianism. Further, Kant's doctrine is based on deontological ethics which dictate that the adherence to particular duties determines right or wrong. Thus, he identifies rational thought as an exceptional feature that separates humans from animals. The feature accords inherent respect and dignity in each human. Therefore, it is upon the physicians, healthcare organizations and pharmaceutical companies to educate the society and combat the opioid crisis. As Kant indicates, humans are therefore meant to follow these laws universally, based on the categorical imperative, thus by virtue of being human” (Siegler, 2019).

Annotated Bibliography

Rachels, S., & Rachels, J. (2019). The elements of moral philosophy (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

James Rachels and Stuart Rachels introduce readers’ to major moral concepts and theories in philosophy in the thirteen major thought-provoking chapters. The authors use clear, understandable explanations and compelling discussions. On chapter 9, the authors suggest that Anscombe’s and Kant’s view on moral rules is a form of non-consequentialism in that good practices are determined by factors other than the consequences (p.133). On Chapter 10, the authors emphasize on Kant’s understanding of respect for persons.  Central to Kant's ethical theory is the claim that all persons are owed respect just because they are persons, that is, free rational beings (p.145). Chapters nine and ten are written so that they may be read independently of one another, thus providing information relevant to the research topic.

Sandu, A. (2018). A philosophical rethinking of medical ethics. Logos, Universality, Mentality, Education, Novelty. Section: Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, 6(1), 28-31.

Sandu encompasses the concept of human ethics, in particular medical ethics. He gives an example of a semiotic distance offered by Jean Pierre Clero in regards to Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of the concept of autonomy. The author also brings up another concept that was derived from Game theory. He argues that another concept derived from Kant’s book is ethical thinking is that of person. Still, according to the author, remains hanging between legal and moral concepts; thus, they are less functional for practitioners of moral ethics (p.30). The author helps me complete the research since it provides insights into the concept derived from Kant’s philosophy and how obsessed in the medical ethics of recent years.

Cook, J. T. (2020). Introduction to Biomedical Ethics. In Bioethical Controversies in Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery (pp. 1-27). Springer, Cham.

In this book, Cook (2020), emphasizes on the importance of medical professionals and other stakeholders in the field of healthcare and medicine to practice their art inside and outside the workplace in a morally responsible manner. He suggests that existing ethical theories regardless of the era of establishment, address the basis of ethical and moral and offer a framework for guiding the people to make the right decisions. The book digs deeper on the consequentialist and deontological theories acknowledging the works of Immanuel Kant in regards to medical ethics (p.25). The book through the moral standpoints enables me to relate the aspects of non-maleficence, beneficence and autonomy.

Knopf, A. (2020). Opioids, cannabis, confidentiality, ethics, buprenorphine among highlights of 2019. Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 32(1), 1-6.

The author widely discusses the issues of drug addiction and its relation to ethics. Among the drugs, he highlights include opioids, cannabis and buprenorphine. My main focus being the use of opioids, he highlights that the issue of the crisis has seen the intervention of various organizations such as the Substance Abuse and Mental Administration and the congress to combat the opioid pandemic (p.6). Most importantly the author links the pandemic to the ethics and moral philosophy, reiterating the concepts of Immanuel Kant and other philosophers and how this can be linked to the social aspect and combats the impacts of addiction. This book helps me to lay the basis of the research paper and draw information on what the responsible organizations and the congress have done to combat the issue.

Lajam, C. M., Cenname, J., Hutzler, L. H., & Bosco III, J. A. (2019). Ethics of Opioid Prescriber Regulations: Physicians, Patients, and Pain. JBJS, 101(23), e128.

Lajam and colleagues discuss the issue of opioid addiction and how patients globally are affected by this issue. They widely discuss the issue of overprescribing as a major cause of the opioid pandemic and how this is linked to the ethic and moral philosophes. They acknowledge the strategies and frameworks of various organizations that have implemented the rules to combat what they call “practitioner overprescribing”. The paper aims at exploring these ethical factors of the interventions by these organizations. the article helps me understand the impacts of opioid overprescribing and the strategies that can be used to combat the issue and how far they have worked, thus useful in my research.

References

Cook, J. T. (2020). Introduction to Biomedical Ethics. In Bioethical Controversies in Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery (pp. 1-27). Springer, Cham.

Knopf, A. (2020). Opioids, cannabis, confidentiality, ethics, buprenorphine among highlights of 2019. Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 32(1), 1-6.

Lajam, C. M., Cenname, J., Hutzler, L. H., & Bosco III, J. A. (2019). Ethics of Opioid Prescriber Regulations: Physicians, Patients, and Pain. JBJS, 101(23), e128.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Pain management and the opioid epidemic: balancing societal and individual benefits and risks of prescription opioid use. National Academies Press.

Rachels, S., & Rachels, J. (2019). The elements of moral philosophy (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Sandu, A. (2018). A philosophical rethinking of medical ethics. Logos, Universality, Mentality, Education, Novelty. Section: Philosophy and Humanistic Sciences, 6(1), 28-31.

Siegler, M. (2019). Clinical Medical Ethics: Its History and Contributions to American Medicine. The Journal of clinical ethics, 30(1), 17-26.