ABSTRACT
Many health care providers are familiar with the basic concepts of health care ethics — surrogate decision-making, advance directives, do not resuscitate (DNR), withdrawal of treatment, confidentiality, and informed consent have become need-to-know terms in the practice of medicine and nursing. Likewise, I expect many health care providers are familiar with the basic principles of health care ethics, including nonmaleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, veracity, and justice. What is perhaps more rare among practitioners is an awareness of how health care ethics is connected to the history of ethics and ethical theories more generally. Yet knowledge of the ethical traditions that have influenced health care ethics may help practitioners in a number of ways: (1) it may help practitioners extend well-known principles to novel cases; (2) it may help practitioners articulate why they have reached a conclusion about the ethics of a particular case; and (3) it may deepen practitioners’ commitment to ethical values of their profession. This chapter seeks to bridge the gap between health care ethics and the traditions from which these ethics emerge.
