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1. Utilitarianism is not as commonly used in health care delivery as deontology.

ID: 122810 • Letter: 1

Question

1.  Utilitarianism is not as commonly used in health care delivery as deontology. However, in times of shrinking healthcare resources and increasing health care needs, utilitarianism is becoming more of an influence in health care resource utilization. What useful guidelines does utilitarianism provide in terms of distributing resources? To what degree is it permissible to sacrifice the rights of one to provide for the welfare of many? To what degree is it permissible to sacrifice the rights of many to provide for the welfare of one?

2.   What alerts you to the presence of an ethical dilemma? To what degree do you think nurses should become involved in making decisions? What concerns you about becoming involved in ethical decision-making?

3.   The ethical principles of autonomy and beneficence often seem to be in direct conflict when addressing ethical dilemmas. Consider the following scenario and discuss the aspects of autonomy and the aspects of beneficence.

A young man with AIDS died in a Midwest hospital in 1993. His physician had placed a do not resuscitate (DNR) order on his chart. Prior to becoming incompetent, the patient had legally authorized a friend to be his durable power of attorney (DPoA) in the event that he was not able to make his own health care decisions. Twice during the last few weeks of the patient’s life, the DPoA had requested that the DNR order be removed. The request to remove the DNR order was based on the history of the patient who had fought courageously against his disease and had on previous occasions of acute exacerbations, rallied, returning to an almost normal life. The DNR order remained in effect and no attempt at resuscitation was made (Edge & Krueger, 1998).

Explanation / Answer

Utilitarianism is the theory that maxmizes the utility in various way , in the terms of well-being.It can distribute resources to the disabled people who can be benefit more than nondisabled people.It increases the total health of the whole population.Utilitarian concept should lead to maximum health gain for majority of population.

It maximizes the overall utility within the power by maximizing the utility of the individual. sometimes it choose action that have less utility, then the total utility of the actions will be less than the amount of goodness.

utilitarian focused on which actions and policies would maximizise the well-being of the group.Adopting one action or policy that benefits the most members of the group.it should give equal consideration to all the members of the society.

Utilitarian focuses on which action is best for an individual.The right action in any situation is the one that produce the more utility than any other action.In this way it provide the rights to the welfare of one.