References
Abstract
To ensure morally justified decisions, clinicians are encouraged to apply ethical theories and frameworks. Beauchamp and Childress’ ‘Four Principles’ approach to medical ethics, or ‘Principlism’ for short, is highly regarded as a simple methodology for considering ethical dilemmas, and is common to many undergraduate clinical programmes. On occasion, ethical dilemmas are complex and one or more of the four principles come into conflict with each other. Critics of the approach have suggested that there is a lack of guidance on how to resolve this conflict.
This paper will argue that principlism facilitates an organised and thorough method of reflecting upon an ethical problem and is well suited to the pre-hospital setting. The problem of how to resolve conflicts between the principles will be explored, demonstrating the merit of the approach through its application to a real-life moral problem from the pre-hospital setting.
Beauchamp and Childress's ‘Four Principles’ approach to medical ethics, or Principlism, is highly regarded as a simple methodology for considering ethical dilemmas. Despite its propitious beginnings, it has been suggested that there is a lack of guidance on how to resolve conflict which arises between the principles despite robust academic defence of the approach (Gillon, 2015; Macklin, 2015).
This paper will argue that Principlism enables an organised and thorough method of reflecting upon an ethical problem which is well suited to the pre-hospital setting. The problem of how to resolve conflicts between the principles will be explored, demonstrating the merit of the approach through its application to a moral problem.
The four principles approach to biomedical ethics provides a straightforward framework for considering moral dilemmas, and is based on four moral principles: respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice (Beauchamp and Childress, 2013). These principles are considered binding unless in conflict with one another. If all the associated obligations can be justifiably met, the agent will have produced a morally acceptable answer to their ethical question.
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