Week 14 Non Maleficence
Week 14 Non Maleficence
Week 14 Non Maleficence
NONMALEFICENCE
• One’s own obligation to do good in the practice of medicine is also limited by
one’s own obligation to avoid evil/harm. One’s avoidance of harm on others is
embedded into what we call, the principle of nonmaleficence. In medical
ethics it has been closely associated with the maxim, primum non nocere,
which means, above all (or first) do no harm (Beauchamp and Childress,
2001). This maxim expresses an obligation of nonmaleficence in the
Hippocratic tradition, ‘I will use treatment to help the sick according to my
ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them’. This
principle helps in decision-making about issues that may alter one’s own life,
such as on killing and letting go, withholding and withdrawing treatment, use
of extraordinary and ordinary means/procedures and other issues.
•
THE MEANING OF
NONMALEFICENCE
• Nonmaleficence comes from a Latin words: ‘non’ to mean ‘not’; ‘malos’
from which ‘male’ is taken to mean ‘bad/evil’ and ‘faceo’ from which ‘fic’
comes which means ‘do/make’. Thus the term nonmaleficence means not
to make or to do bad or to make evil things intentionally.
• In medicine, nonmaleficence means not to inflict harm which is not
different from ‘not doing evil or bad things’. This principle requires a health
care provider to prevent or refrain from any sort of actions that
eventually causes harm to patient and more importantly when the action
is never been justified.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN
NONMALEFICENCE AND BENEFICENCE