The hospital as an ethical organism

Abstract

I

t does not seem that there is a general and a single answer to the question whether the hospital may act as a moral agent. Many hospitals are seen as well-equipped of ethical conscience institutions while others prefer to remain in a limbo of institutional ethical indifference. The ethical pluralism, the fall of hope to discover who the moral authority which can give answers to the most relevant moral issues is and the excessive administrative centralization make the individual responsibility to be taken by the institutional evasion that justifies an institution with a weak administrative ethic. Hospitals seen as ethical institutions imply a social recognition and performance as sensible, explicit and conscience moral agents. Such collective ethical convictions necessarily have to be compatible with respect to individuals’ legitimate ethical pluralism. This makes each hospital define its mission and philosophy and all the members – physicians, patients directors and administrators work for the hospital has to be a humanizing focus in which people grow in dignity and become truly humane. It must be a common home where men and women whit serious scientific and ethical commitments, shared and publicly know, procure to perform their professional vocation in favor of sick people.

This article deals whit these topics besides the components of the hospital´s ethical style.