Final answer:
The four main ethical principles in healthcare and research involving human subjects are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. These provide a framework for respecting patient rights, ensuring fair treatment, and guiding medical and research practices.
Step-by-step explanation:
The four main ethical principles that form the foundation of ethical practice in healthcare and research involving human subjects are: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. These principles aim to uphold respect for individuals and their capacity to make decisions, the duty to do good, the obligation to do no harm, and the need to ensure fairness in medical practice and research.
Autonomy refers to respecting the individual's right to make informed decisions about their own healthcare. Beneficence involves acting in the best interests of the patient or research participant to achieve their wellbeing. Nonmaleficence, closely related to beneficence, is about avoiding cause of harm. Lastly, justice ensures that individuals are treated equitably, and benefits, as well as burdens, of new or experimental treatments, are distributed fairly.
These ethical principles are not only paramount in patient care but also integral to the conduct of medical research, ensuring that ethical dilemmas are approached with a structured and principled mindset. Accurate record-keeping, honest communication, informed consent, and confidentiality are all aspects of these overarching principles. Additionally, research involving animals must be overseen by an institutional animal care and use committee to ensure humane treatment.