Utilitarianism & Deontology Ethics in Healthcare: COVID-19 Vaccination (Article Sample)

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Utilitarianism and Deontology Ethics in Healthcare: COVID-19 Vaccination
The COVID-19 vaccination has raised controversy in the medical field regarding whether individuals have a legal or moral obligation to get vaccinated. Still, the real dilemma faces the health professionals who have to decide whether to tend to intentionally unvaccinated people and give them the same medical priority as the vaccinated. Ideally, health ethics are based on four principles; beneficence, justice, autonomy, and non-maleficence, which present conflicting fronts for health professionals, especially regarding pandemics like COVID-19. On the one hand, the professionals are ethically obligated to respect patients' autonomy and do no harm. On the other hand, they should consider potential patients and other professionals who might get infected through the unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. This dilemma can be solved by applying the two commonly used ethical theories in healthcare; utilitarianism and deontology. While utilitarianism focuses on the consequences of an action, deontology ethical theory is based on the duty to do what is right regardless of the results.
According to Utilitarianism theory, what is right or wrong is judged by whether it maximizes positive outcomes, that is, whether the action causes more pleasure and minimal pain to as many people as possible. In this case, people who knowingly refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 should not be given the same