Utilitarianism And Deontology

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Recommended: Legal and ethical concepts in healthcare

The duty to treat states that morally, doctors have greater obligations to help patients than non-clinicians. This is a topic of great controversy, especially since the Ebola epidemic has caused both doctors and nurses to contract the disease while they were treating victims in Sierra Leone and in other parts of Africa. Doctors without Borders and the World Health Organization have dispatched nurses and doctors to help combat the epidemic, but the epidemic itself poses a threat to these healthcare workers. Is there still a duty to treat even if it risks the practitioner’s life? I believe that it is still their duty to treat patients regardless if there is a treat to their life. Through the use of Utilitarianism, I will argue that physicians …show more content…

The principal belief of Deontology is that the consequences do not govern whether or not an action taken is morally permissible. What this means is, as long as the action taken is morally permissible, then that is all that matters, the goal is to always act in a morally permissible way regardless of the consequences. Morally permissible has to do with whether the action taken was right or wrong. Take for instance a doctor, who has a family, who is conflicted in whether or not it is his duty to treat a patient with the plague. The doctor may choose to not treat the patient because he has a duty to take care of his family and if he were to treat the patient then there is the possibility that he could contract the plague and have to be quarantined and possibly die or he would have to be quarantined just for coming in contact with the patient. Due to the fact that this was a morally permissible action to him, he believed that he shouldn’t treat the patient so that he can go home with his family, it does not matter that the result of this action would possibly cause the death of the patient because it was considered the right action to take to him. Therefore, choosing not to treat the patient wouldn’t be considered

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