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What is non-maleficence in medical ethics?
Should non-maleficence be an ethical principle?
What is the difference between beneficence and nonmaleficence?
What does nonmaleficence mean?
Dec 3, 2023 · Within medical ethics, non-maleficence is one of the four main guiding principles, alongside beneficence, autonomy, and justice. Balancing these principles is critical to ensuring ethical decisions are made within healthcare settings.
Non-maleficence is a core principle of medical ethics stating that a physician has a duty to ‘do no harm’ to a patient. It directs a medical professional to consider the benefits of all procedures and weigh them against the potential risks and burdens on the patient.
Jun 4, 2020 · The 4 main ethical principles, that is beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice, are defined and explained. Informed consent, truth-telling, and confidentiality spring from the principle of autonomy, and each of them is discussed.
- Basil Varkey
- 10.1159/000509119
- 2020
- Med Princ Pract. 2021 Feb; 30(1): 17-28.
- Autonomy. Autonomy itself is essentially the right to self-governance. According to this principle we ought to have the freedom to live our lives in accordance with what we deem in our best interests in line with our desires, beliefs and preferences.
- Non-maleficence. This is the principle of doing no harm to patients. Beauchamp and Childress state: “the principle of non- maleficence obligates us to refrain from causing harm to others.”
- Beneficence. Beneficence, or doing good, not only “requires that we treat persons autonomously and refrain from harming them, but also that we contribute to their welfare.”
- Justice: In the case of healthcare we consider distributive justice which is defined as the “fair, equitable, and appropriate distribution of benefits and norms.”
The principle of nonmaleficence states a prohibition on causing harm to others in the absence of justifying circumstances. Among general ethical principles, nonmaleficence has the strongest claim to being self-evident. 1 If an ethical theory claimed that harming others had no tendency to be wrong, we would be justified in rejecting the theory ...
- David DeGrazia, Joseph Millum
- 2021
The 4 main ethical principles, that is beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice, are defined and explained. Informed consent, truth-telling, and confidentiality spring from the principle of autonomy, and each of them is discussed.
This article critically analyzes the principle of beneficence and the principle of nonmaleficence in clinical medical ethics. It resists some recent skepticism about the principle of nonmaleficence, and then seeks to explain its role in medicine.
