Ethics Teaching in Allied Health Fields

In a physical therapy department of a rehabilitation center a college student injured in an automobile accident has been treated daily for three months. He is a paraplegic and will never regain the use of his legs. However, the physician has written orders not to let the young man know that his disability is permanent. Until now the student has taken for granted that he will walk again. Today he asks the physical therapist directly if he will always be paralyzed. The physical therapist must decide: should I withhold the truth from the patient, or tell the truth, thereby endangering the doctor-patient relationship? Since physicians are regularly faced with awesome ethical decisions, it is appropriate for medical students to be given a basic course in physician ethics. However, the physical therapist's dilemma is only one example of the many cases in which other health-care personnel must make ethical decisions by sharing responsibility with the physician or, in the absence of physicians, assuming full responsibility. Nurses, in particular, have begun to acknowledge unique ethical questions in their work. This, in turn, has given rise to the realization that simply extending to nurses the teaching of physician ethics is inappropriate. The result has been a surge of interest in developing a better understanding of ethical theory, ethics issues, and a hard look at how ethics ought to be addressed in a nursing curriculum

Engineering ethics · Sociology · Engineering · Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare · Ethics in medical practice · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Psychology