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

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.