Question

At the end of the day, what holds weight: patients autonomy or doctor's responsibility to have beneficience and nonmaleficience?

Answer 1

At the end of the day, what holds weight: patients autonomy or doctor's responsibility to have beneficience and nonmaleficience?

At the end it's the doctors responsiblity to have beneficence and nonmalefience is important than patients autonomy.

Requires that the patient have autonomy of thought, intention, and action when making decisions regarding health care procedures. Therefore, the decision-making process must be free of coercion or coaxing. In order for a patient to make a fully informed decision, she/he must understand all risks and benefits of the procedure and the likelihood of   success. Because ARTs are highly technical and may involve high emotions, it is difficult to expect patients to be operating under fully-informed consent.

Medical ethics as a scholarly discipline and a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, anthropology and sociology. As such there are a number of values in medical ethics such as autonomy, non-maleficence, confidentiality, dignity, honesty, justice and beneficence, among others. These values act as guidelines for professionals in the medical fraternity and are therefore used to judge different cases in the fraternity. For purposes of this work, this paper examines the principle of beneficence in biomedicine. Using both hypothetical cases and others in real life situations, the paper reflects on the implications of beneficence in biomedicine. It argues that the principle of beneficence is a prima facie obligation that should “always be acted upon unless it conflicts on a particular occasion with an equal or stronger principleâ

• Requires that the procedure be provided with the intent of doing good for the patient involved. Demands that health care providers develop and maintain skills and knowledge, continually update training, consider individual circumstances of all patients, and strive for net benefit.

• Requires that a procedure does not harm the patient involved or others in society. Infertility specialists operate under the assumption that they are doing no harm or at least minimizing harm by pursuing the greater good. However, because
  assistive reproductive technologies have limited success rates uncertain overall outcomes, the emotional state of the patient may be impacted negatively. In some cases, it is difficult for doctors to successfully apply the do no harm principle.
• The most minimal level is the level of non-maleficence, i.e., the duty not to
  do direct harm to another. This is the level contained in the Hippocratic
  prescription in the Epidemics - "at least do no harm." This level of benefi-
  cence is expected in any civilized society. It is enjoined even in the most
  extreme libertarian moral philosophies.
  A further step in beneficence is the duty to prevent harm to others, i.e., to
  remove or limit the possibilities of harm. Here we move from passive non-maleficence to a more active intervention on behalf of others. At once, even at this minimal level, the possibility of paternalism begins to appear. For example, we might readily agree that there is a duty to remove an obstacle on a railroad track that would result in derailment and harm to other people. But this action might conceivably deprive some passenger who at that mo-ment wishes to die and would prefer to do so in a railway accident, of the privilege of doing so. Most people would discount such an unlikely prospect and agree that there was a positive moral obligation to remove the object in the interest of the majority of passengers who certainly do not want to die this way.
• 
  But what about protecting people against accidents by enforcing laws to
  "buckle up," or wear helmets, or wear goggles at work. This view of benefi-
  cence requires a more direct limitation of autonomy. While libertarians
  might resist this degree of paternalism, society seems to be giving certain measures like these sanction on the thesis of harm to others by the economic costs and disability incurred by society which suffer the injured to go un-treated - even if they elect to ignore safety requirements..