ABSTRACT
Medical ethics, bioethics, clinical ethics and professional behaviour are increasingly subjects of debate in the healthcare literature and the lay press. Ethics provides a set of principles for examining the morality of personal and professional behaviour. The principles are: respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice. The application of ethical principles to research is important in order to protect the rights and welfare of research participants, including human volunteers. The ethical framework of I. Kerridge, M. Lowe, and J. McPhee is based on a structured set of tasks. An alternative is the Jonsen, A. R. model, which examines problems by analyzing four domains: medical indications, patient references, quality of life and contextual features. Dame Janet Smith's case demonstrates how religious beliefs can raise ethical dilemmas for staff. In this chapter, regulation can be considered to provide the mechanisms or processes of clinical and corporate governance aimed at safeguarding and improving safety and quality.
