Title: Ethical issues in healthcare work
Course: Health Management, Ethics and Research - Ethiopia (Full)

Ethical issues in healthcare work

Your work as a Health Extension Practitioner will involve ethical issues – even if you are not really aware that this is the case. Everybody has ethical issues in their lives and ethical theory can help us all to understand these issues – and work out ways of dealing with them.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy (Box 7.1), which takes a systematic approach to define social and individual morality – the fundamental standards of right and wrong that a whole society, as well as individuals, learn from their culture and peers. Perhaps you have already started to think about some things in your own life where you have had to take important decisions that might have an ethical component? For example, how should you look after your family when conflicts arise?

How should you deal with people in your community who present you with problems that are difficult to resolve? All these aspects of living your life involve ethical issues (Figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1 Ethics is not a remote subject but is part of everyday life. The way that any society looks after its families, for example, is an ethical issue. (Photo: FMOH/WT)

Box 7.1 What is philosophy?

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.