NERMC Bioethics

            The Biomedical ethics, commonly called bioethics, committee at North East Regional Hospital is put together of at least one or two doctors and an interdisciplinary team that is available for educating, policy making, community communication, and consultation on bioethics issues in the hospital.   North East Regional Hospital needs to better educate people about thinking ethically as well as to let community members know that the bioethics team is readily available.   I will first explain what bioethics entails and later define what it is that I will be doing for the North East Regional Hospital bioethics committee.

            Bioethics is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a discipline dealing with the ethical implications of biological research and applications especially in medicine” ("Merriam-Webster," 2011).   Bioethics education for medical practice is essential in today’s multifaceted world because of many reasons.  Medical policies and patient rights are ever changing, health care systems function differently than that of the past, and clinical practice now involves decision-making about many new issues.   Bioethics is starting to become a bigger, more popular target as the complexity of caring for patients grows and the demand for changing technology remains endless.   Some trending categories of bioethics include the human genome project, cloning, patenting of human products, and transplants.   However, there are less visible but more common issues present as well such as ensuring patient self-determination and proper informed consent for medical procedures, end-of-life decision-making, research ethics, reproductive medicine, and managed care and related economic issues.   The type of bioethics that is most needed will depend upon reasons why bioethics is taught.   There is a need for better assessment of the impact of teaching bioethics upon the way people make decisions.              

“There are a set of principles or ideals which people use as a common ground for bioethics.   They include the autonomy of individuals to make choices, while respecting the choices of others, justice.   In all things we do, the ideal is to avoiding doing harm, and trying to do good” (Macer, 1999).   Each of the following principles plays a key role in the composition of bioethics: respect, beneficence, justice, and do no harm.   Individuals have autonomy (the right to make ones own decisions about their own actions freely and without concern) and we should respect people for the simple reason that they are counterparts to our health community.   Beneficence is defined as having benefits that are proportionate to risks.   For example, in researching treatments for a certain health problem, potential side effects should be weighed against the potential benefits and the weight distribution should be somewhat of an equal balance.   Justice is seen as the even distribution of risks/benefits throughout the general public.   In biomedical research, groups should potentially benefit and/or potentially be exposed to risk at the same rate of other groups unless there is some factor that justifies unequal distribution.  And lastly, there is the principle of do no harm.   This principle is quite clear in that certain ideas should not be presented nor should experiments/treatments be performed if we know that they will ultimately produce harm.   

Resources

Van McCrary, S.  (2001).  Role of bioethics in medical education.  Retrieved from http://www. actionbioscience. org/biotechnologymccrary. html

Macer, D.  (1999, November).  Why bioethics is needed and what bioethics is needed: Results of iubs member survey.  Retrieved from http://intl. concord. org/cbe/pdf/macer. pdf 

Merriam-webster.  (2011).  Retrieved from http://www. merriam-webster. com/dictionary/bioethics