Veterinarian in Society

BIOETHICAL PRINCIPLES

• Autonomy
  • Individual freedom is the basis for the modern concept of bioethics. This freedom is the principle that a person should be free to make his or her own decisions.
  • First, accepting patient autonomy means that physicians ’ roles must change. They must be partners in their patients’ care rather than the absolute arbiters of the timing, intensity, and types of treatment.
  • Second, they must become educators, teaching their laymen patients enough about their diseases and treatments to make rational decisions.
  • Finally, and most distressing to clinicians, is that accepting patients’ owners autonomy means that some of them will make foolish choices. For physicians dedicated to preserving their patients’ well-being, having to allow people to select what the physician considers terrible treatment options may be both frustrating and disheartening.
  • Allowing these "foolish choices" is part of accepting the principle of patient autonomy, however. If patient autonomy is fully understood, much of the rest of clinical bioethics naturally follows.
• Beneficence
  • Beneficence is doing good. Most veterinary healthcare professionals entered their career to apply this principle. It has been a long-held and universal tenet of the medical profession.
• Non-maleficence
  
  • Non-maleficence is the philosophical principle that encompasses the medical student’s principal rule, "first, do no harm." This credo, often stated in Latin , prim-um non nocere, derives from knowing that animal patient encounters with veterinarian can prove harmful as well as helpful. This principle includes not doing harm, preventing harm and removing harmful conditions.
• Confidentiality
  • Stemming at least from the time of Hippocrates, confidentiality is the presumption that what the patient tells the physician will not be revealed to any other person or institution without the patient’s / its owners permission. Occasionally, the law, especially public health statutes, may conflict with this principle.
• Personal Integrity
  • Personal integrity is adhering to one’s own reasoned and defensible set of values and moral standards and is basic to thinking and acting ethically.
  • Integrity includes a controversial value within the medical community truth telling. Absolute honesty has been championed by many who feel that the patient, no matter what the circumstances, has the right to know the truth.
  • Honesty must be tempered with compassion, however; honesty does not equal brutality.
• Distributive Justice (Fairness)
  • This form of justice relates to fairness in the allocation of resources and in the veterinarians obligations to sick animals. This value is the basis of and is incorporated into society-wide animal health care policies.