Autonomy Revisited
One of the core issues in medical ethics has been and still is autonomy, people's right to make their own self-regarding choices in situations where more than one option is available. Depending on the case, these choices may be influenced by personal life history, one's ethical and other v...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2004
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| In: |
Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Year: 2004, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 41-46 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | One of the core issues in medical ethics has been and still is autonomy, people's right to make their own self-regarding choices in situations where more than one option is available. Depending on the case, these choices may be influenced by personal life history, one's ethical and other values, and one's future expectancies. A professional soccer player may risk an operation, which for a less athletic individual would represent an unnecessary risk that might jeopardize her ability to even walk. Saying no to painkillers may sound irrational to those who do not see anything ennobling in avoidable suffering, and preferring homeopathic medicine to more evidence-based medicine may lead others to seriously doubt the logic of one's thinking. But although these situations may be difficult,1 they seldom lead to an impasse. Even if serious value conflicts emerge in these patient–medical personnel encounters, they can be overcome by the fact that, in Western countries, honoring patients' autonomy has been widely accepted as part of medical professionalism. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-2147 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0963180104131083 |