Six-step framework for ethical decision making

The expectation, from the ethos of medicine and society, is that a practitioner should make the correct ethical decision in the clinical setting. Yet there is little help for them as to a process for making ethical decisions. A structured six-step framework may assist. It is not an algorithm to arrive at a determinate answer in all situations and ethical issues but instead offers a process that indicates the most relevant information and biomedical considerations a practitioner needs to be aware of and helps to make ethics issues more manageable. The issues practitioners face are complex and resistant to reduction; it is hubris to pretend otherwise. Yet, the difficulty of these issues warrants practitioners relying on a framework to guide them in the process of making ethical decisions.