Professionalism and Ethics Flashcards
Advance care directive
A legal document that specifies a person’s preferences for treatments, life-sustaining technology, and other medical care; written before and used after the person is incapacitated.
Authorized users
Individuals who need to access a patient’s record to fulfill their official job-related duties and responsibilities.
Autonomy
The ethical principle of making decisions independently or for oneself.
Belmont Report
Ethical foundation for biomedical and behavioral research in the United States; published in 1979 under the formal title Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.
Beneficence
The ethical principle of acting to help or benefit others.
Best interests standard
A standard whereby a patient’s surrogate makes healthcare decisions based on the patient’s best interests.
Case consultation
The institutional ethics committee process of hearing and reviewing an ethical conflict and then advising all the parties involved on the next most appropriate steps to take.
Casuistry
An ethical decision-making approach that relies on a case’s facts, complexity, relevant laws, and unusual circumstances to determine a judgment on that case.
Common Rule
Uniform set of regulations on the ethical conduct of research involving human subjects established by the federal agencies that fund such research; formally Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects.
Culturally competent and sensitive care
Healthcare that is aware, considerate, and respectful of patients’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds and practices.
Declaration of Helsinki
International ethics guide for physicians conducting research using human subjects; developed by the World Medical Association and originally adopted in Helsinki, Finland.
Duty of care
A responsibility under fiduciary duty that requires an individual or a group to act with the same care and prudence that any reasonable entity would exercise.
Empathy
The consideration of others’ emotions and situations that allows one to feel the same way.
Enlightened self-interest
An ethical theory that maximizes the benefits to oneself and minimizes harm to others.
Eugenics
The ethically questionable practice of controlling who reproduces (those with desirable genetic makeup) and who should be sterilized (those with hereditary genetic defects) in an attempt to breed a more superior human population.
Federal-wide assurance of compliance
A written, binding, formal commitment by an institution to comply with applicable regulations on research using human subjects.
Fidelity
Good stewardship as demonstrated by keeping confidences and avoiding conflicts of interest.
Fiduciary duty
The duty of an individual or a group to act in the best interest of another individual or group.
Good-faith duty
The duty of healthcare management consultants to avoid conflicts of interest and self-dealing.
Justice
The ethical principle of administering deserved rewards or penalties that are aligned with legal and moral standards.
Law fallacy
The erroneous assumption that when healthcare managers are acting legally, they are acting ethically.
Lexington Model
A risk management program for disclosing errors that was instituted in Lexington Veterans Affairs Medical Center following a patient’s death (The Joint Commission requires accredited healthcare organizations to have a process for disclosing unanticipated outcomes of care).
Medical futility
The professional opinion that continuing medical treatment is no longer a viable option for a patient.
Moral blindness
Insensitivity to or ignorance of the ethical implications of an action, whether one’s own or that of others; the Tuskegee Study is one example.
Nonmaleficence
The ethical principle of refraining from actions that could harm others.
Nonmoral concerns
Ethically neutral factors in a decision, such as religious doctrine, personal faith, laws and regulations, self-interest, and situational context.
Nuremberg Code
A set of ten statements requiring that human participation in research be voluntary and informed; established after the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Doctors Trial, in which Nazi doctors were tried for performing torturous medical experiments on civilian prisoners during World War II.
Privacy
The right of individuals to limit others’ access to their body, thoughts, and feelings.
Respect for persons, beneficence, and justice in research
Three ethical principles of the Belmont Report referring to informed consent, assessment of risks and benefits to research participants, and the fair and unbiased selection of research participants.
Security
The use of managerial, personnel, operational, and technical controis to ensure that information systems and applications run effectively and support the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and information.
Stewardship
The act of putting first the best interests of stakeholders, which leads to building and maintaining trust.
Stigma
A discredited attribute that may lead to segregation and social disdain.
Tuskegee Study
A 40-year-long syphilis study on 600 African-American men in Macon County, Alabama, that misinformed its subjects and prevented treatment for the syphilitic men in the group.
