Medical Ethics: Beneficence

What Is Beneficence?

Beneficence is a core principle in medical ethics that guides practitioners to act as they believe is in the best interest of the patient. Unlike non-maleficence, it goes beyond simply doing no harm and encourages to actively help others.

It might be useful to think of beneficence as of the process of ranking the available options for the patient from best to worst, taking into consideration the following aspects:

• Will this option resolve this patient’s medical problem?
• Is it proportionate to the scale of the medical problem?
• Is this option compatible with this patient’s individual circumstances?
• Is this option and its outcomes in-line with the patient’s expectations of treatment?

You will notice that several considerations are concerned with the patient’s expectations or circumstances. This is also known as holistic or patient-centric care.

It is important to bear the patient’s expectations in mind when ranking treatments because when we refer to doing “good”, we don’t only mean what is medically good for the patient, but also what is acceptable to the human being we are treating.

Why Is Beneficence Important?

Beneficence is important because it ensures that healthcare professionals consider individual circumstances and remember that what is good for one patient may not necessarily be great for another.

Beneficence: Example

You may be given an ethical scenario to consider during your interview. For example:

An eight-year-old child has been admitted to hospital with a significant open fracture to their left leg. The limb is deformed with significant bleeding and the patient is extremely distressed. The parents are demanding immediate action be taken.

There are a number of options for treatment here, but let’s take an extreme one – amputation.

If the bleeding is life-threatening, the limb sufficiently injured and the risk of infection extremely high, then amputation could be a treatment option. It would be “good” for the patient in as much as the injury would be resolved and the threat to life from bleeding or infection somewhat reduced.

But let’s consider the implications of amputation. The treatment would result in a life-changing injury and the risks of infection or massive bleeding aren’t proportionate. The limitations to their physical movement also carry other future risks that could inadvertently result in further physical and mental health issues.

Most important of all, there are other interventions that have better outcomes attached. Using blood products to manage the bleeding, reducing the fracture if possible and considering orthopaedic surgery will have better outcomes for this patient. That course of action is “more good” than amputation.

It’s a rather severe example but also helps demonstrate an important point. Beneficence asks us to promote a course of action, but in practice, we also need to de-promote certain courses of action if there are better options available.

Discussing Beneficence At Interview

When you’re talking about ethical issues, you need to consider beneficence. You should think about the following things:

• Have you thoroughly considered every option and weighed up what the best course of action is for the specific patient in the scenario?
• Does the best course of action align with patient expectation?

Beneficence Questions

Some questions you could be asked at an interview include:

• Why is it important to consider the best interests of a mother in cases involving abortions?
• What should be done if a patient refuses treatment for a life-threatening condition?

You can find the answer to these questions – and more – in our ethics questions and answer guide.

Hot Topics

Keep on top of the hot topics that you can apply to the principle of beneficence, for example:

• Charlie Gard – how did Doctors consider beneficence?
• Vaccinations – can HPV vaccinations be justified as mandatory on the grounds of beneficence?
• Abortion – how does beneficence factor here?