ABSTRACT
Ethics are based on philosophical theories and can often seem abstract and removed from real-life situations. Also, those who tend to choose medicine or surgery as their profession intuitively want to treat their patients in a way that will be most beneficial to the patient’s quality of life. For these reasons, many clinicians see medical ethics either as impractical to apply in daily practice or as common sense. It is, we believe, more useful to use medical ethics as a set of tools. If we have a good understanding of ethical concepts, these tools can be used in situations we encounter every day – not just in life or death situations, but also during ward rounds, in outpatient clinics, in theatre or in the emergency department. This chapter has two objectives. First, to give the reader a clear and concise explanation of applied principlism as a revision tool or ‘recap’. Second, to expand on these concepts to give a deeper understanding of how applied principlism can be used in modern medical and surgical practice.
