Ethical Guidelines for the Quality Assessment of Healthcare

Introduction

As a branch of Philosophy, Ethics guides the leading of a good life. Ethics also guides moral conduct in life. Applied Ethics, on the other hand, is a discipline that guides application of ethical theory to real-life situations. Medical Ethics or Bioethics, studies the role of value judgments and “moral issues in the fields of medical treatment and research. The term is also sometimes used more generally to describe ethical issues in the life sciences and the distribution of scarce medical resources. The professional fields that deal with ethical issues in medicine include medicine, nursing, law, sociology, philosophy, and theology, though today medical ethics is also recognized as its own discipline” (McGee & Caplan, 2007). Over time, Bioethics has grown as a discipline and its practitioners play important roles in clinical decision making, research studies, legislature, professional organizations, and community activities; in academia, government, non-governmental organizations and industry. Events that have shaped the development of Bioethics as a discipline over time are outlined in Table 1.