Nonmaleficence In Health Care

Health care providers main purpose is to help their patients in anyway they can. Sometimes they may have to face a hardship on how to deal with a certain outcome, whether it be a test result or a patients reaction. For instance in this case of the sixty nine year old male with a background of depression especially when dealing with health problems. Nonmaleficence is a principle that ultimatly means we should not inflict evil or cause harm to others and not cause avoidable or intentional harm. This includes avoiding even risking of harm. Therefore the physician believes that keeping the patients diagnosis from him is simply avoiding the risk of harm. With nonmaleficience comes Utilitarianism which is a theory in ethics with an understanding that moral action is the one that maximizes utility. Utility is defined in various ways, including as pleasure, economic well-being and the lack of suffering. In other words it should always weigh in more good than harm. …show more content…
Autonomy is the ability a person has to make their own decisions. In order to make those decision they must have all the relevant information needed. One principple connected to autonomy is Veracity which is truth telling. Telling the truth is necersary for both sides of health care being a patient or a provider. Because this physician had treated the patient for many years he knew his history and was able to predict how he may act. The physician had to obtain this infromation from the patients honesty. Although now when the physician is supposed to tell the truth regarding the patients test results he does not share that truth