Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:Ethics and Professionalism
Lecture:Ethics and professionalism
Slide content:Concern for the Scope of Their Action Who are health care professionals responsible to? Everyone in their community? Everyone in the country? How far does respect for autonomy go? Do animals have rights? Does the environment have rights? 10
Slide notes:Health care professionals have an obligation to consider difficult questions about how far and wide their ethical duties extend. Obviously, its not reasonable to think that every individual health care professional is responsible to care for every individual in the world. But is each health care professional responsible to everyone in their community? How about everyone in the country? Furthermore, does the health care profession as a whole have a duty to society as a whole? Do health care professionals have to respect the rights of laboratory animals, or of the whole natural environment? These are difficult questions, and well-meaning people can have fundamentally different beliefs about the answers. The phrase concern for the scope of their action means that when health care professionals are confronted with these kinds of difficult questions, they are obligated to think about them. 10