Final answer:
Health science professions establish codes of ethics to help practitioners make ethical decisions. These codes outline responsibilities and guide action in areas like research integrity, patient consent, and environmental impact. They are essential tools for addressing complex moral dilemmas in professional settings.
Step-by-step explanation:
To make ethical decisions easier for practitioners, many health science professions establish codes of ethics. These codes provide a set of guidelines to ensure that professionals act responsibly and make decisions that are consistent with shared ethical principles.
For instance, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Computer Society (IEEE-CS) adopted the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice to outline the ethical obligations of software engineers, including software approval criteria related to safety, privacy, and environmental impact.
In fields such as healthcare, ethics require that research be conducted with integrity, informed consent be obtained, and patient rights be respected. Institutional review boards play a critical role in overseeing procedures and ensuring ethical compliance. Decisions in medical and clinical settings may involve various ethical considerations, including respecting the personal beliefs of patients related to treatments like vaccinations and blood transfusions.
Similarly, bioethics is a continually evolving field where researchers collaborate to establish guidelines for current practices, considering new technological developments and their implications.