Professional Ethics

Questions of ethic origin concerned to relationships between the doctor and the patient often argued and discussed hotly , e .g . issues of eligibility of abortions or euthanasia . The question of the acceptability of telling lies to a patient for his own good is probably , not as stirring as those mentioned above , but certain diversities in understanding of the matter that do exist among people have made final and indisputable decision impossible thusfar . A doctor is a person people trust trust . And this is natural because a man cannot be frank with a

person he mistrusts , whereas a doctor quite often needs as much information as it is possible to discern what had afflicted his patient . Moreover , this information should be true , because a doctor has no use for fabricated symptoms and complaints , as well as a recently made up knowledge of a patient 's lifestyle does not help the physician to find out what the trouble is . And sometimes the information a medical practitioner requires to identify a case can be private to the extreme presuming that the patient trusts his doctor and shares every bit of information with him and all the information shared is true Circumstances surrounding cases may be private , and some sicknesses might have a negative influence on the social status of a person

This confidence is most often expected to be mutual by society . A patient supposedly goes to learn the hidden truth about his condition and to learn about what courses of action is are available to him Similarly to the doctor 's inability to diagnose a patient correctly without the correct information , a patient cannot take the steps required to heal himself if the doctor does not tell him the truth . But delicate situations arise sometimes when the doctor cannot be confident in return . How should a medical practitioner behave when he cannot tell the truth to his patient , where the truth might simply be harmful to his health ? Is it appropriate for a doctor , who is an entrusted person , to misinform or deceive people that supposed to be open to him ? To answer these by no means simple questions let us bury into the depth of ethical ideas

Let us specify what a lie is at first . Lie in common interpretation is an untruthful statement made to someone else with intention to deceive (Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia , n .d . But this definition can be broadened and detailed even more , A true statement may be a lie . If the person who makes the true statement genuinely believes it to be false , and makes the statement with the intention that his audience believes it to be true , then this is a lie (Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia , n .d . Thus we can see that the definition of lying is mostly dependent on intent . If it is a subject 's intention to deceive then any statement is a lie . This means that the so-called white lie or a lie for the greater good , also falls under...