The changing focus of health care ethics: implications for health care professionals

Contemporary health care ethics has become preoccupied with the issue of people's rights to and in health care (eg the rights to informed consent, confidentiality, quality of life, death with dignity, etc). There is no question that this preoccupation has achieved some morally significant and beneficial outcomes in health care domains. Nevertheless, it is evident that health care ethics has not achieved its most basic task, namely, to promote and protect the genuine wellbeing and welfare interests of those who are among the most vulnerable people in society and whose health status is at risk. A key contention of this paper is that if health professionals are going to be able to meet future moral challenges posed by the complex question of human health, then the nature, aims, purpose, significance, and modus operandi of contemporary health th care ethics needs to be revisited, re-visioned, and revitalised.