Chapters 1-7 Medical Ethics Exam Questions

All of the following statements are true regarding HIPAA EXCEPT:

A violation may give rise to a private cause of action or remedy

Which of the following patients refusing transfusion should have their decisional capacity scrutinized most closely?

A patient you are nearly certain will die without transfusion

Physiologic futility is also referred to as:

Medically futile because ineffective

The greatest consensus would exist that morality protects which of the following groups?

Moral agents

Morality includes which of the following?

Moral rules and moral ideals and moral virtues

The federal privacy regulations (HIPAA) impose an obligation on covered entities to do which of the following?

Adopt internal procedures to protect the privacy of protected health information, Designate a privacy officer, and Secure patient records that contain protected information

The requirements for autonomous choice on the part of an individual include all of the following EXCEPT:

An individual free from persuasive influences

According to Kant, the capacity to conduct oneself in accord with universal rational principles and not the liberty or license to conduct oneself as one sees fit, is a definition of:

Autonomy

Which of the following is NOT an example of an ethical theory?

Beneficence

A physician who unjustifiably breaches confidentiality may be guilty of:

Breach of contract, Malpractice, and Unprofessional conduct

Moral virtues are those _________________ that involve justifiably obeying the moral rules or justifiably following the moral ideals more than most people do.

Character traits

Which of the following is NOT a moral virtue?

Compassion

"What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself . . ." This excerpt best expresses which of the following concepts?

Confidentiality

According to the clinical casuistry model described in chapter 4, "warrants" refers to:

Consideration(s) from prior paradigmatic cases, stated as a maxim

The moral rules as formulated by Gert include all of the following EXCEPT

Do not steal

Which of the following deals with morality at the most abstract level?

Ethical theory

According to the clinical casuistry model described in chapter 4, "rebuttal" refers to:

Exceptional circumstances sufficient to override the provisional conclusions

According to the Parsonian model of medical professionalism, the authority of the health care professional is an example of:

Expert authority

The principles of loyalty and fairness apply to which of the following four-topics?

External factors

True or False: According to the Hastings Center, the goals of medicine include the relief of any and all pain and suffering.

False

True or False: It is always irrational to act contrary to one's own best interests in order to act morally.

False

As discussed in class, the goals of medicine include all of the following EXCEPT:

Furtherance of all patient preferences

In the text, the case of the young woman of average height who wore a size 34C bra, but who wished to undergo breast augmentation to size 56FF so that she could embark on a career as an exotic dancer was used to illustrate which of the following?

Goal illegitimacy

Components of the clinical casuistry method include all of the following EXCEPT:

Guarantees

According to Aristotle, a morally virtuous person is characterized by which of the following?

Habitually correct desire.

Under the Florida Omnibus AIDS Act, when an HIV infected patient refuses to inform past or present sexual or needle-sharing partners of his/her HIV positivity, what obligation does the practitioner have to these third parties?

He/she has a privilege(duty) to warn

Why did Immanuel Kant separate the demands of morality from the search for happiness?

In order to restore dignity to human beings as capable of rising above selfish desires.

According to Ronald Dworkin, when judges modify established legal rules by overruling precedent, they are doing so:

In the application of deeper legal principles

Interventions that have no realistic chance of achieving the goals of medicine are said to be:

Medically futile

As discussed in class, according to Parsons, professionalism is characterized by which of the following?

Interests in status and reputation

When a person behaves in a way that he knows, or should know, will significantly increase the probability that he, or those he cares for, will suffer death, pain, disability, loss of freedom, or loss of pleasure, and he does not have an adequate reason for so acting, he is said to be acting:

Irrationally

Which of the following statements is true regarding morality?

It is a public system. (Informal public system applying to all rational persons.)

Which of the following is the best statement regarding Thomas Aquinas's teaching on natural law?

It is an attempt to defend the intelligibility of the natural moral order in the context of divine revelation.

The question of a physician's obligation to disclose unpleasant or undesirable truths to his/her patient is one that concerns bioethicists. Lying works to undermine the trust humans place in one another's word. Who justified lying in some instances when he said: "Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions is acknowledged by all moralists; the chief of which is when withholding of some fact...would save an individual...from great and unmerited evil..."?

John Stuart Mill

The "four-topics" referred to in the four-topics method of case-based decision making include all of the following topics EXCEPT:

Justice

Which of the following is one of the four principles of biomedical ethics?

Justice

"Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" is:

Kant's categorical imperative

The inherent goal of morality is which of the following?

Lessening the amount of harm suffered by those in the protected group

Which of the following does the Hippocratic Oath NOT prohibit?

Maintaining confidentiality

Medically futile acts generally implicate which of the following prongs of the internal morality of medicine trident?

Means-ends disjunction

Morality is primarily a guide for the behavior of which of the following?

Others

Dispositions to have certain emotional responses in certain situations that are general enough that they are likely to be encountered by everyone are:

Personality traits

Contemporary bioethics, which tends to become involved in debates about public policy, can trace its roots to modern philosophers such as Immanuel Kant. Which of the following statements best describes Kant's philosophy as it applies to embryonic stem cell research?

Personally, I morally disagree with embryonic stem cell research, but I would not want to impose my beliefs on others since there is no objective data that proves when life begins.

John Stuart Mill argued that "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." This statement serves as an example of which of the following?

Pleasure has two levels; quality is more important than quantity.

patient develops gangrene of his left foot which requires a below-the-knee amputation. As a result he has an impaired gait. This is a foreseeable consequence of the amputation which is directly chosen in order to save his life. This scenario demonstrates which of the following?

Principle of double effect.

Which of the four-topics referred to in the four-topics method of case-based decision making implicates the principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and respect for autonomy?

Quality of life

What is the difference between rules and principles?

Rules are more specific in content and more restricted in scope than principles

According to the Parsonian model of medical professionalism, which of the following are proper motivations for medical professionals?

Status and reputation

If all informed rational persons would estimate that less harm would be suffered if a moral rules violation were publicly allowed, then that violation is said to be:

Strongly justified

"Once a therapist determines or should determine that a patient poses a serious danger of violence to others, he or she bears a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the foreseeable victim of that danger." This was the holding in which of the following cases?

Tarasoff v. Regents of U. of Cal.

Which of the following statements of ethics make(s) no mention of confidentiality, either explicitly or by implication?

The Charter on Medical Professionalism, The Hippocratic Oath, The Principles of Medical Ethics of the American Medical Association

Which of the following factors weighs in favor of a health care professional's (HCP's) overriding a patient's refusal of treatment?

The HCP believes that the patient, by refusing the treatment in question, runs the risk of death

According to the Hastings Center Goals of Medicine Project, the goals of medicine include all of the following EXCEPT:

The avoidance of death

According to the clinical casuistry model described in chapter 4, "grounds" refers to:

The core situation that creates a difficulty that requires resolution

Which of the following is an accurate statement of the meaning of the term bioethics?

The discipline devoted to the articulation of good decisions in the practice of health care.

Where three conditions are met, health care providers (HCPs) may be liable for harm to third parties that results from unjustifiably failing to warn. Those three conditions include which of the following?

The hazard/harm arises in some way from the HCP's patient

According to Edmund Pellegrino, what separates the medical professional from the skilled technician or laborer?

The oath

An 86-year-old retired ballplayer is informed that his leg is gangrenous and that an amputation is necessary to save his life. He replies, "I refuse. I worship the great god baseball, and based upon Abner Doubleday's teachings, I believe that submission to surgery is a violation of baseball's law. I understand the consequence of my refusal is my death and I accept that result." The patient is brought to the operating room and undergoes an amputation. Which of the following is the best justification for the course of action selected?

The patient lacked decisional capacity

A 42-year-old patient with diabetes mellitus type II, severe ketoacidosis and pneumonia is brought to the emergency department. He is somnolent and stuporous. As an IV line is being inserted to facilitate administration of IV fluids and insulin, he awakens and exclaims: "Leave me alone. No needles and no hospital. I'm OK." Which of the following statements is most correct?

The patient lacks decisional capacity because he does not understand the consequences of his decision

The use of CPR in a patient who has been decapitated is an example of:

The physiologic goals of CPR cannot be achieved.

As discussed in chapter 5, authority is:

The probability that one's commands will be obeyed

Which of the following is John Stuart Mill's first principle of morality?

The pursuit of the maximum happiness for all mankind.

True or False: It is never irrational to act in one's own best interest even though this is immoral.

True

True or False: Professionalism may be thought of as the virtue-based analogue of the duties inherent to the internal morality of medicine.

True

The principles of biomedical ethics as expounded by Beauchamp and Childress include all of the following EXCEPT:

Truth

If all informed rational persons would estimate that more harm would be suffered if a particular kind of moral rules violation were publicly allowed, then that violation is said to be:

Unjustified

Character traits that all impartial rational persons judge in the same way are referred to as:

Virtues and vices

Requirements for autonomous choice which of the following?

Voluntariness ( it is decisional capacity that is required for autonomous choice, not legal competency)

If some but not all informed rational persons would estimate that less harm would be suffered if a particular kind of moral rules violation were publicly allowed, then that violation is said to be:

Weakly justified

According to Byron Chell, which of the following persons would be labeled incompetent?

a. A person whose refusal of life-saving treatment is based on his/her belief that such treatment is inconsistent with the teachings of Harry Potter b. A person who lacks an understanding of the consequences of his/her treatment refusal c. A person whose treatment refusal is based upon irrational reasons ANSWER: d. All of the above

Everyone is always to obey the moral rules, unless:

b. An impartial rational person can advocate that violating it be publicly allowed