Ethical Questions Flashcards
Are you aware of any current controversies in the area of medical ethics? List and discuss some of these.
Four pillars: Beneficence – helping patients Non-maleficence – not hurting patients Justice – fairness for society Autonomy – patient choice
Abortion
I do believe it’s a women’s right to choose but I respect people who actually have strong opinions about wanting the child to be born and they’re right that a child would be born if it wasn’t aborted, so it’s not exactly an easy issue. I just think on such a difficult issue, it should be up to the person to decide and it’s difficult enough for the person to decide.
CrisPR
Whether it’s able to genetically alter a baby’s life. Really problematic, like anything in our scoeity richer people will have more access to create designer babies. We are a long way away from that, but I think for now, let’s just focus on curing potentially fatal or life-altering monogenic diseases and then go from there.
Euthanasia
I support it being legal because I could imagine situations where I would want it for myself. Legal in 9 states including Vermont. As long as someone has a terminal diagnosis that is expected to die pretty soon with no chance of improvement and isn’t clearly mentally impaired and clearly expresses a desire to end their life early I think we can respect those wishes if they’re in so much pain. Even though this breaks one of the pillars of medical ethics which is non-maleficence.
Use of AI and Racial Biases
if we are going to use the tools. The thing is that artificial intelligence isn’t racist, we are. AI is only as good as the data we give it, so if we are trying to create an algorithm that assess risk score and warns people to get tested in certain scenarios and doctors tend to systematically under-rate the risk scores of black or latino patients, then it’s not going to work.
What do you think of affirmative action?
I fully support affirmative action – I think that ideally it wouldn’t have to exist in a world where everyone started with at least somewhat similar opportunity. But that’s not the reality and the reality is that many students, disproportionately those of color, have had more difficult roads to college or to medical school than others or less access to resources, less time to study for exams, fewer social connections and less social capital to rely on. So all of that stuff needs to be taken into account before you just look at raw numbers and raw information of an application.
Have you personally encountered any moral dilemmas to date? Of what nature?
A big one academically was getting requests to cheat by passing down resources from a class that I was in to the next year. I think that’s pretty common. I was super uncomfortable with it and I ended up kindof deflecting but offering help in any way that I possibly could without giving materials or sending help or links that might be useful for their learning.
How would you feel about treating a patient who has tested positive for HIV?
I would feel good and take precautions and do the best that I can. I know the dangers of being a doctor and it’s part of the job to give anyone who needs it care no matter what.
What are some of the ethical issues that our society considers in regard to teenage pregnancy?
Ethical concern would be that it’s rare that someone so young has the time and the responsibility. IF your brain doesn’t even fully develop until your 20’s. More likely to have complications like maternal and developmental problems for the child. I think that’s fine in certain cases and some people are ready and it’s especially useful to have family that can help in that case. But in other cases, it’s irresponsible and I also think that better access and education to sex education and contraceptives would help here.
Assume there are limited resources available and you must make decisions in a major emergency with a wide assortment of patients from all ages, backgrounds, and degree of injury. Assume also that there is no “right answer” to this question, only considered and unconsidered responses. Who would you direct to receive the treatment first and why.
- Triage by the most urgent or the closest to death, no matter the age or any other characteristic
I would first sort out patients who I judged to have life-threatening illnesses, which you can by triage, often is color-coded and can take 4-5 categories, with red being the most urgent. Anyone who’s life is in danger you need to treat and you need to save their life.
From those, I think I would use quality adjusted life years. So, I would likely treat patients who had longer to live frankly and might respond best to treatment. That’s one reason I think I am pretty interested in working with children is that you can make a difference that gives someone so many more years to live with the whole life ahead of them.
If you are not a minority, how might you best meet the needs of a multiethnic, multicultural patient population?
- I am lucky enough to have some amount of training already
I am lucky enough to have grown up in a place where there is immense cultural diversity and I have learned and benefitted from that. I mentioned my soccer team already as an example because that’s the most obvious one, but I was one of only one or two people on that soccer team with American born parents. I have had the privilege of having very ethnically and racially diverse friend groups, and I have been able to help out with underserved communities while helping out at the Hudson Guild and at StreetSquash, which I have spent a lot of time at. - Acknowledgement that cultural competency is built over time
That being said, I think it’s important for me to acknowledge that I don’t know everything about every culture and cultural competence is a skill that can be built and improved over time. I don’t pretend to and that’s why being willing to listen to people being respectful of them and everyone can constantly be improving their cultural competence and understanding. And it’s most important to realize that some groups may have (earned and understandable) distrust, that may cause them to avoid the medical industry as a whole until it’s a last resort and I need to do my best to understand and accept that and do the best I can to reach a place of trust and understanding.
To what extent do you feel that you owe a debt to your fellow man? To what extent do you owe a debt to those less fortunate than yourself? Please explain.
- Squash A Good Example
I 100% owe a debt to those less fortunate to me. One example of this is that I was able to start playing squash in the first place. While I didn’t know how inaccesible a sport squash was when I first started playing it when I was 5. I couldn’t have chosen to different sports to play growing up, with soccer where all you need is a ball and it’s so readily accessible, compared to squash which is so much more difficult to ostart. I actually started playing a public affordable club, but it got bought out by equinox and they tore down the squash courts, and that’s happened all over and the most common places to play are the Harvard, Princeton and yale clubs. - Goal to Make it More accessible – I enjoyed and profited from sport, so have a responsibility to make it more accessible.
One of my ultimate goals in life is to find more ways to make squash and other sports like that more accessible. My dad actually recently started a non-profit squash club in Manhattan that offers tiered memberships and free memberships based on income level to make it affordable to all. I helped combine that club with an squash program for young kids at the Hudson Guild in High school. I want to continue that and continue to contribute. Things like that, where there is such a blatant disparity in access to a sport is something that needs to change.
