Ethics
- Would you prescribe the oral contraceptive pill to a 14-year-old girl who is having sex with her boyfriend?
- What do you think about abortion/euthanasia etc?
- Give an example of a situation where you have supported a friend in a difficult social circumstance. What issues did they face and how dod you help them
- What does the word empathy mean to you? How do you differentiate empathy from sympathy?
- Is it right for doctors to ‘feel for their patients’?
- What thoughts and feelings might face someone offered alcohol to celebrate after receiving a liver transplant?
- A person with learning disabilities is regularly being teased by their neighbours. How might that affect them?
- What do you guess an overweight person might feel and think after being told their arthritis is due to their weight?
- A friend has asked your advice on how to tell her parents that she intends to drop out of university and go off travelling. How do you respond?
- A friend tells you he feels bad because his family has always cheated to obtain extra benefits. How would you respond?
- Is it better to give health care or aid to impoverished countries?
- Why can’t doctors give a guarantee that a medical or surgical procedure will be successful?
- Should doctors have a role in contact sports such as boxing?
- Do you think doctors should ever go on strike?
- Do you think we should find out more about patients’ views of their doctors, their illness, or their treatments? How would you set about this?
- What do you think are the major sorts of problems facing a person with a long-term health problem, such as difficulty breathing?
- What are the differences between the length of life and quality of life?
- Is there a moral case against drug companies becoming as large and powerful as the market allows them to be?
- What are the arguments for and against the decriminalisation of drugs such as cocaine?
- Should alternative or complementary medicine be funded by the NHS, and why?
- Should the NHS be involved in non-essential surgery?
- Should the NHS fund the treatment of self-inflicted diseases?
- With the growing problems of overpopulation should the NHS fund IVF treatment?
- How do you think doctors should treat injury or illness due to self-harm, smoking, or excess alcohol consumption?
- Female infertility treatment is expensive, has a very low success rate, and is even less successful in smokers. To whom do you think it should be available?
- Would you prescribe the oral contraceptive pill to a 14-year old girl who is sleeping with her boyfriend?
- What is your feeling about euthanasia?
- Would you perform abortions as a doctor?
- Is it right that Viagra should only be available to certain groups of men?
- Some Trusts are refusing to perform some elective operations on obese patients. Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s right?
- What do you think about the use of animals for testing new drugs?
- How do you respond and what do you feel when you see a beggar in the street?
- Do you think that Class A drugs should be legalised?
- Would being religious, and therefore potentially having a more positive view of death, be detrimental in your role as a doctor?
- A man refuses treatment for a potentially life-threatening condition. What are the ethical issues involved?
- A woman who is bleeding heavily refuses to receive a blood transfusion that you are proposing. Why do you think this might be? How would you handle the issue?
- You have one liver available for transplant, but two patients with an equal medical need. One is an ex-alcoholic mother with two young children, the other a 13-year-old with an inborn liver abnormality. How would you decide to whom it should be given?
- You have one dialysis machine to share between three patients with a equal medical needs. One is a 17-year-old drug addict who has just overdosed, one is a 40-year old woman with terminal breast cancer and only 6 months of life expectancy, the third one is a 70-year old marathon runner. Who gets the machine?
- Imagine you are on committee able to recommend only one of two new surgical treatments to be made available through the NHS. The treatments are: an artificial heart for babies born with heart defects, or a permanent replacement hip for people with severe arthritis. Both treatments are permanent, i.e. never need repeating, and are of equal cost. On what grounds would you make your arguments?