Plastic surgery raises unique ethical issues. It is essential to understand these issues to be well-informed and educated about the procedure.
It is often difficult to determine if a patient’s preference for a cosmetic change constitutes a medical need.
Patient’s Right to Informed Counseling
The practice of plastic surgery presents a variety of ethical challenges. Developing a moral marketing plan for aesthetic surgery, figuring out how much to charge for services not covered by insurance, and considering if cosmetic surgery is suitable for otherwise healthy individuals are a few of the more popular ones.
Informed consent is fundamental to Bellevue plastic surgery and forms the basis of the doctor-patient interaction. According to this idea, surgeons should advise patients about the dangers and available options before an operation. However, it’s not enough to tell patients the facts. The informed consent process must be tailored to each patient and their values. It is called the “reasonable patient standard,” a core concept of medical ethics.
Think about a patient suffering from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental illness that results in an obsession with a little or nonexistent physical defect. Many BDD patients experience no improvement after undergoing many surgeries to address their worries, which begs the ethical question of whether such procedures should be allowed.
Patient’s Right to Beneficence
This principle can help physicians find the least intrusive and most beneficial solution to a patient’s issue, thus decreasing the chance of risky or unnecessary procedures. It can also help alleviate stress for patients and healthcare personnel, improving overall quality of life.
Cosmetic surgery is a growing industry, particularly among adolescents. Procedures like nose reshaping, ear pinning, and breast augmentation are becoming increasingly common for teenagers. These procedures can result in social, emotional, and psychological distress if the underlying cause is not addressed.
The plastic surgeon’s ethical obligation is to offer various options and make recommendations that reflect the best possible outcomes. It can be challenging because of competing factors like cost and remuneration. However, a deontological approach to benevolence may suggest that it is the physician’s moral duty to protect the patient’s health as a priority.
Patient’s Right to Justice
A cornerstone of medical ethics is informed consent, crucial in plastic surgery. Patients are often vulnerable to shaming and body image issues, as well as false advertising. In addition, the ethical principle of nonmaleficence requires that surgeons prioritize the needs of the most disadvantaged patients in their care.
Moreover, many cosmetic surgeries involve adolescents and minors. These patients must receive complete information regarding the advantages and disadvantages of their options and how those choices will affect their long-term health.
The four biomedical ethics principles, beneficence, nonmaleficence, fairness, and respect for autonomy, can assist surgeons in identifying and resolving the particular ethical issues encountered in plastic surgery. These include balancing the interests of beauty and well-being, the ethical implications of marketing cosmetic surgery, and moral strategies for dealing with patient expectations. These issues are not limited to plastic surgery alone and can apply to large medicines. Reflecting on and wrestling with these principles can be helpful to clinicians of all specialties.
Patient’s Right to Autonomy
Physicians must respect a patient’s right to autonomy to provide them with appropriate health care. It is often a challenge, especially since many patients are reluctant to hear their physicians’ views about treatment.
One example of a patient’s right to autonomy is the woman who has breast cancer and receives adequate reconstruction that leaves her with symmetrical, average-sized breasts. She now wants to re-do her reconstruction to get larger-than-average breasts, even though the surgeon believes that it would be medically unnecessary.
Another example involves a man who suffers from severe, idiosyncratic suffering because of a lung condition that impairs his oxygen consumption. There is currently a treatment available that would improve his oxygen consumption above the level of most people. He may qualify for public funding to pay for this treatment. However, the etiology of his condition does not warrant giving him exceptional standing over other patients with similar conditions whose etiologies are more serious.
