Trey Delap

A Doctor's Conscience: Conventional and Reflective Morality in Clinical Decision Making Trey Delap

Physicians and patients face important ethical conundrums in their joint pursuit of health. When there is no more medical evidence to gather, a physician's decision is more ethical than medical. How best to attain health is the result of an often complex moral deliberation considering seemingly myriad competing normative values including: autonomy, beneficence, nonmalficence, justice, veracity, privacy, confidentiality, and fidelity. Achieving balance among these values is a result of conventional or reflective moral deliberation motivated by a sense of duty or the best action to achieve the good aim of medicine: health. Using real case examples, A Doctor's Conscience examines ethical theories of deontology, teleology, internal and external morality as applied in conventional and reflective moral methods towards equilibrium among these values. A practical model for medical morality is established bringing together the best features of each theory accommodating value pluralism and guiding physicians towards making ethically sound decisions in their clinical practice.