is a guiding principle meaning “first, do no harm.”

Context: Core principles of medical ethics

In the four principles approach, means respecting a patient’s right to self-determination and refusal or choice of treatment.

Context: Four principles approach

In the four principles approach, means acting in the patient’s best interest.

Context: Four principles approach

In the four principles approach, means avoiding causing harm to the patient.

Context: Four principles approach

concerns fair distribution of scarce health resources and fair decisions about who receives what treatment.

Context: Justice in healthcare

is the ability to make rational, uninfluenced life-and-death decisions.

Context: Capacity and decision-making

A patient’s is the process where patients are given adequate information to make voluntary treatment decisions.

Context: Consent, autonomy, and capacity

When a person later lacks capacity, an is a prior statement of treatment preferences used to guide decisions.

Context: Advance directives and surrogate decision-making

If a patient lacks decision-making capacity, a is a person authorized to decide for them.

Context: Surrogates and capacity

is a situation where personal or institutional interests may compromise clinical judgment.

Context: Ethical conflicts

In ethical conflicts, can conflict with confidentiality and autonomy when disclosure is needed to prevent serious harm.

Context: Confidentiality and duties to protect

COVID-19 open science emphasis (rapid communication and transparency) causes faster public interventions and vaccine/monoclonal antibody development, but it also increases risk of safety tradeoffs, waste, and public confusion; this is an effect of .

Context: COVID-19 and ethical challenges (open science)

COVID-19 resource rationing in ICUs creates dilemmas about who receives ventilators/beds, which becomes a central ethical issue of .

Context: COVID-19 and ethical challenges (rationing)

Lack of PPE during COVID-19 increases infection risk for providers while delivering care, intensifying and duty-of-care tensions.

Context: COVID-19 and ethical challenges (PPE shortages)

When principles conflict, an ethical system may require ranking or hierarchy to apply the best moral judgment in difficult cases; this is the idea of .

Context: Ethical conflicts and hierarchy