Levels of Allocating Resources Most discussions about rationing and allocation of health resources focus on specific situations involving denial of care for patients with cancer or other terminal diseases. For…
Payment of Informal Fees by Patients and Their Families Informal payments are defined as payments “to individual and institutional providers, in kind or in cash, that are made outside official…
Ethical Issues in the Migration of Health Professionals Many of the physicians and nurses who care for patients in wealthy countries were born and educated in resource-poor developing countries. In…
Ethical Duties to Provide Health Care to Undocumented Aliens Irregular migration is a global phenomenon. Millions of undocumented aliens live and work in dozens of countries across the globe. As…
Ethical Issues in Financing Health Services and Designing Insurance Systems Financing refers to the methods of raising money for health services (Roberts and others, 2008, pp. 26, 153). A variety…
Withholding or Withdrawing Treatment at the End of Life Withholding treatment refers to not beginning a particular treatment, whereas withdrawing treatment refers to stopping a treatment that has been started:…
Is There an Ethical Right to Health Care? In establishing the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1946 and writing that agency’s constitution, the participating nations declared the basic principle that…
Theories of Ethics For thousands of years of human experience, people have looked for ways to differentiate right conduct from wrong. Systems have been developed for the purpose of helping…
Ethics of Abortion in Different Times, Places, and Cultures Abortion has been viewed very differently in different times, places, and cultures. In some countries and cultures, abortion is practiced as…
Ethical Principles and Practical Issues of Informed Consent The patient’s right to choose is based on the ethical principle of autonomy, or self-determination. Pursuant to that ethical principle, informed consent…
