AAMC Medical Ethics and Professionalism 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which ethical principle obligates physicians to respect a patient's right to make their own healthcare decisions?
- Beneficence
- Autonomy (Correct answer)
- Nonmaleficence
- Justice
Correct answer: Autonomy
Autonomy is the principle that competent patients have the right to make informed decisions about their own medical care without coercion.
Question 2: For informed consent to be legally and ethically valid, it must include all of the following EXCEPT:
- Disclosure of risks and benefits
- Confirmation that the patient is competent
- A guarantee of a successful outcome (Correct answer)
- The patient's voluntary agreement
Correct answer: A guarantee of a successful outcome
Informed consent requires disclosure, competence, and voluntariness, but no physician can ethically or legally guarantee a successful outcome.
Question 3: The Belmont Report (1979) identified three core principles for ethical research involving human subjects. Which of the following is one of them?
- Veracity
- Fidelity
- Respect for Persons (Correct answer)
- Utility
Correct answer: Respect for Persons
The Belmont Report established Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice as the three foundational principles for ethical human subjects research.
Question 4: A physician withholds a terminal diagnosis from a patient because they believe the news will cause psychological harm. This practice is known as:
- Therapeutic privilege (Correct answer)
- Beneficent paternalism
- Medical futility
- Surrogate decision-making
Correct answer: Therapeutic privilege
Therapeutic privilege refers to withholding information from a patient on the grounds that disclosure would cause harm, though it is generally considered ethically problematic.
Question 5: Which ethical principle requires physicians to 'do no harm' to their patients?
- Autonomy
- Justice
- Beneficence
- Nonmaleficence (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Nonmaleficence
Nonmaleficence, derived from the Latin 'primum non nocere,' obligates physicians to avoid actions that cause unnecessary harm to patients.
Question 6: An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is primarily responsible for:
- Accrediting medical schools on behalf of the AAMC
- Protecting the rights and welfare of human research participants (Correct answer)
- Credentialing physicians for hospital privileges
- Managing conflict-of-interest disclosures for pharmaceutical companies
Correct answer: Protecting the rights and welfare of human research participants
IRBs review research protocols to ensure that studies involving human subjects meet ethical standards protecting participant safety, rights, and welfare.
Question 7: The doctrine of double effect holds that an action with both a good and harmful effect is ethically permissible when:
- The physician intends the harmful effect to achieve the good effect
- The harmful effect is unintended and proportionate to the good achieved (Correct answer)
- The patient has not consented to the treatment
- The treatment is experimental and not yet FDA-approved
Correct answer: The harmful effect is unintended and proportionate to the good achieved
The doctrine of double effect permits an action if the harmful effect is foreseen but not intended, and the good effect is proportionate to and not achieved through the harm.
AAMC Medical Ethics and Professionalism 1
Which ethical principle obligates physicians to respect a patient's right to make their own healthcare decisions?