Medical Ethics: Patient Wishes vs Doctor Actions

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A conflict between a doctor who wants to treat his patient a certain way, and a patient who wants to be treated by the doctor the way she wants. The doctor feels the that certain treatment that the patient wants is dangerous and warns the patient that he will pronounce the patient mentally unstable. This is exactly what happened in the case of Mrs. Jackson and Dr. Lowell. The conflict in this entire article is if weather the doctor can, or can not, accuse his patient mental instability to go about the treatment as he sees fit. Is this an invasion of the patient’s wants and desire for a certain way of treatment? or does the doctor have moral rights to do anything and everything even though it is against the patient’s wishes. What justifies as moral and immoral procedure for a doctor to treat his patient.

When faced with this hard dilemma, the article suggests that is use Rule Utilitarianism and Kantian Deontology, to help me solve the problem of weather this justifiable or morally incorrect. Rule Utilitarianism basically reads that “a person ought to act in accordance with the the rule that, if generally followed, would produce the greatest balance of good over evil.”(Mappes & Degrazia, 13) According to this, if anyone faces a moral dilemma, they should always try to sort of do a Cost/Benefits analysis on the outcomes of their actions versus the good that they would cause. So even today when I was debating if or not I should personally write my research essay, or, pay somebody else to write my essay for me, it took me all of 30 second to decides that even though I might not like what i would be doing for the next three to four hours, part of me know that the happiness i would get from it was unparalleled to anything. However, now, if you look at the Kantian Deontology, you will find a lot of things that are different. What this theory of morality says is the outcomes are not at all important, but your duty hold precedence over anything. Similar to Rule Utilitarianism, this theory of morality says that any act, as long as it complies with a rule, is morally justified.

When we think about this problem in a rule utilitarian way, we have to abide by the rules which clearly state that the patient has the final say in what treatment is going to be used on them.

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