Institute for Ethics
UNM's Health Sciences Center
Advancing Ethics Education, Service, and Scholarship
Clinical Ethics Competencies
Professional Responsibility
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Assume responsibility for profession as a whole
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Understand emergency treatment duties
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Do no harm
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Do not abandon patients
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Understand one’s own biases
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Provide for continuity of care
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Keep abreast of important research and changing practice
standards
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Understand rights and duties of both patients and
professionals
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Understand one’s own limitations
Patient's Rights
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Understand autonomy and informed consent
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Obtain valid consent or refusal of treatment
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Understand medical and legal dimensions of decisional
capacity
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Know how to proceed if treatment is refused
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Understand appropriate use of ethics committees and
consultants
Privacy and Confidentiality
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Understand how to protect patients’ privacy as well as the
duty to inform
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Inform patients of limits of confidentiality
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Understand legal requirements of reporting
Truth Telling
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Tell the truth
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Understand those specific circumstances when it might be
morally justified to withhold or delay information
Reproductive Ethics
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Understand ethical and legal issues of reproductive decision
making: abortion, birth control, sterilization, sexually transmitted
diseases, and appropriate referrals; reproductive research; Genetic
screening and counseling; treatment decisions for seriously ill neonates
Distributive Justice
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Understand issues of access and barriers to health care:
alternative models of equitable delivery; individual rights and the public
good; impact of technology, managed care
Research Ethics
- Understand the ethics and law of research on humans as well
as animals: informed consent, patient care/comfort vs. research imperatives;
access to new therapeutic research treatments; use of placebos; conflicts of
interest; duty to share research results
Developed by the University of New Mexico Health Sciences
Center Ethics Program and the University of New Mexico School of Law. Please
send questions or comments to
ethics@salud.unm.edu.
