[Methods of clinical ethics].

Abstract

Medical ethics decisions always entail a certain amount of difficulty. Clinical alternatives make the adoption of well-founded decisions quite difficult. Each case is different and does not lend itself to a predetermined decision. If a satisfactory method is used to make moral evaluations, serious mistakes can almost always be avoided and defensible decisions made. Medical ethics is many things, but in essence it is necessarily a strategy or method. True professional medical ethics requires a method that leads to moral discernment as well as uniformly appropriate decisions. One of the most important functions of a method is to keep standards of evaluation linked to facts. Good methods prevent medical ethics from falling into the trap of false generalization and keep it rooted in real-life situations.