Medical Ethics: Complexities and Challenges PDF

Keywords

Ethics, medical practice, research

Abstract

Profound changes are occurring in medical practice due to research, new discoveries, technological advances and different policies. The current and future changes are having a great impact on cost, health care services and ethics. Medical practitioners need to have enough knowledge of ethics to be able to practice their growing practical and research responsibilities with fairness and pride. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the abilities of a group of practitioners to explain ethics and their applications. Twenty medical practitIOners responded to a questionnaire distributed to them while attending a course on ethics, research and scientific writing. The results showed that the majority of the candidates were able to explain the meaning of ethics. There were deficiencies concerning research, authorship and writing. None of the candidates mentioned the impact of current changes and future developments on ethics in health care and research. There is a great need to expand on the knowledge and practice of ethics among health care professionals.