Daniel Wilkenfeld, PhD
Assistant Professor of Acute & Tertiary Care
University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing
Abstract: The generally agreed upon principle that legality and ethics can come apart is frequently overlooked in our professional ethics education and decision-making procedures. The crux of the issue is that we teach in our philosophy classes that the law can sometimes be unethical, but then sometimes teach in our nursing ethics classes (and likely other professional ethics classes) that students should always follow the law. Worse yet, our decision-making procedures for practitioners also (likely unintentionally) embed this presupposition that the law is always correct. The law could no doubt give us some reason to choose action A over action B, but in professional contexts we frequently treat the law as a side-constraint that limits the logical space of choices to exclude even consideration of action B. If B is the ethically mandatory action, this in effect forces professionals to do something unethical by preventing them from ever seeing the ethical action as an option. This is a problem.
Join the colloquium via Zoom here: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/92939384732
Meeting ID: 929 3938 4732
Center for Bioethics & Health Law Colloquium
Location and Address
Online