ArticleHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland)2025
Ethical Decision-Making in Medical Practice: The Role of Moral and Business Philosophies.
Article in Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ethical Decision-Making in Entrepreneurial Dentistry: An Exploratory Conceptual Framework Informed by Romanian Healthcare Studies.Dentistry journal · 2026Article
- Physical Restraint in Critically Ill Older Patients: ICU Nurses' Attitudes and Ethical Decision-Making.Nursing in critical care · 2026Article
- Volume without Value: The Empty Metrics of Pain Medicine Social Media Influence.Journal of pain research · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEthical decision-making in medical care increasingly requires balancing clinical values, professional duties, and organizational reasoning. Understanding how healthcare professionals navigate moral dilemmas necessitates examining the philosophical orientations that shape their ethical judgments. Alongside traditional medical ethics, a business ethics perspective highlights organizational and managerial dimensions of healthcare, offering a more comprehensive understanding of ethical decision-making in modern clinical contexts.
aimThis study aims to examine how healthcare professionals reason about ethical dilemmas by mapping their moral orientations and decision-making patterns across five ethical frameworks-idealism, relativism, objectivism, legalism, and Machiavellianism-integrating both medical and business ethics perspectives.
methodsA cross-sectional study was conducted with 277 participants (medical doctors and students). Two validated instruments were used: the
resultsAmong the five orientations, Legalism negatively predicted "It depends" responses (i.e., higher Legalism scores were associated with fewer indecisive responses), indicating greater decisiveness in ethically ambiguous situations. Unexpected positive correlations were also found between traditionally opposing constructs-such as Ethical Relativism and Moral Objectivism-suggesting moral pluralism. The overall regression model was not statistically significant (R
conclusionsAbstract philosophical orientations showed limited predictive power for contextual ethical decision-making, highlighting the complex and multidimensional nature of moral reasoning in healthcare. Findings inform the design of context-sensitive ethics education programs that integrate philosophical reflection with case-based learning to strengthen ethical competence among medical professionals.
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Registered trials
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