Morality of Human Acts Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1.

Be open-minded to opportunities for growth in the knowledge of the morality of human acts having a significant bearing not only upon your health care practice but most significantly upon the final destiny of your human existence. 2. Be sure of the accuracy of the kind of health care you are providing. Remember, imperfect and indirect voluntary acts along with vincible ignorance do not altogether excuse and exonerate you from accountability. (Unless specific circumstances provide and establish involuntary nature of an act and/or invincible ignorance in a particular act done.) 3. Be familiar with the different moral and ethical principles stipulated in the chapter relevant to your tasks and be able to apply them to the different health cases you are to encounter in your specific field of service as a medical doctor, nurse, midwife, medical technologist, x-ray technician or pharmacist. Law and Conscience Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1. Be constantly discerning on and observant of the Will of God manifested in the provisions of natural law. The said provisions can be acknowledged in the natural given order of things to which the administration of health care must be aligned without unnatural, deliberate and willful disruption. 2. Be constantly open to the formation of conscience that will enable you to dispel doubts and obtain moral certitude of a certain health care practice in keeping with the natural order and with Gods law by reading ethics and/or moral theology books, listening to moral authorities, putting what is learned into practice, etc. 3. In case of doubt, consult persons in authority like priests, moral theologians, ethicists and/or anybody with sound knowledge of moral laws and principles so as to know what to do and what to avoid. 4. Finally, be steadfast in following and asserting, with all honesty and sincerity, what your formed conscience tells you. You cannot be ousted from your profession for acting in conformity with the dictates of your formed conscience particularly in matters of your religious faith. It will give you inner sense of peace and joy beyond what your profession can give ultimately ushering you toward the Ultimate End of your existence God. Moral Principles in Health Care Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1. Observe and apply the different moral principles to specific moral issues and problems that beset the practice of health care profession today. 2. Do justice by carrying out your duties and obligations inherent in your profession without any mental reservations, by treating your patients according to their needs, and by providing the necessary means of care that does not just address pathological problems but also emotional and spiritual longings. 3. Consider yourself as steward of your patients, who will always be there to look after their welfare, to give due care, and to avoid any health care measures that are destructive of human life and dignity.

Contraception Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1. With the knowledge of the morality of contraception, be honest enough to tell your clients who are asking for it about its adverse effects and the moral questions it forments while respecting their freedom of conscience. 2. While couples are allowed not to intend to procreate in each marital act, they are not allowed to frustrate by an action before, during or after the marital act, the procreations aspect of marital act 3. Actively take part in the education of your clients along natural family planning with its different methods. There is no moral objection as long as they are motivated with valid reasons stipulated in the chapter in order to give proper upbringing and education to their children. 4. When married couples fruitfully exercise their procreative power, they come to enjoy a certain special participation in Gods own creative work. This is a dignifying task that needs to be inculcated in ones mind and heart through family planning seminars. Mutilation and Sterilization Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1. The removal if health organs without the three necessary conditions for its moral permissibility os conspicuously evil, Direct sterilization is the usual event requiring formal, direct, and proximate cooperation among health care providers. With clear conscience, you cannot ordinarily assist in such a procedure. 2. Upon acquisition if knowledge about an immoral surgical procedure, you have the right to refuse, with all prudence and courtesy, to cooperate and/or assist even if you are already at the operating room. However, if there is nobody to take your place, you may remain on the case since, leaving the O.R might endanger the very life of the patient thereby creating a worse scenario. But do not forget to express your moral objection right away. 3. As conscientious health care professional, make it clear with the administration of the hospital where you are employed or will be employed that you are not duty-bound to assist in medical or surgical procedures blatantly against moral law. Remember the strong contention of St. Peter and the other apostles, along this scenario: Obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). If the hospital is run by people of good will and of right reason, your clear position will be courteously accepted. Abortion Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1. Abortion willed as an end or a means of another end is direct and thus, immoral. This includes therapeutic abortion as the case may be. Cooperation is an ample ground for automatic excommunication. The sin of abortion is reserved for absolution to the bishop or priest delegated by him. 2. Abortion which is not directly willed as an end or means and which is merely seen and tolerated as evil effect is indirect and thus, morally permissible under the principle of double effect. 3. In case of spontaneous-inevitable abortion, if it is medically indicated that the fetus is dead, It is morally licit to remove it; If the fetus is viable and the mother is in danger of death, termination of pregnancy for premature delivery is medically advisable incurring no moral objections; if the fetus is not viable, direct removal of which constitutes direct abortion rendering the procedure immoral; if the mother is in danger of death, the

principle of double effect has to be invoked so that the procedure constitutes indirect abortion which is morally allowed. 4. In case of abruption placentae, if the placenta is completely detached causing death of the fetus and that hemorrhage follows, removal of the fetus is, of course morally licit; if the placenta is not yet completely detached and that the non-viable fetus is still alive, removal of said fetus may constitute direct abortion which is not morally permissible; again in which case, the principle of double effect has to be employed. 5. Responsibility must be taken to dispel any vincible ignorance and to obtain knowledge about surrounding issues and moral principles relative to the removal of the clear and certain conscience in whatever procedure and/or cooperation to be employed. This can be done by means of reading books in health ethics and morality, consultation with moral authorities, and others. Artificial Insemination and In Vitro Fertilization Pointers for a Health Care Practitioner 1. To participate in immoral procedures like artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, and in the prescription of masturbation as means to obtain semen specimen for medical purposes due to lapse of judgment in good faith, may diminish or even eliminate, as the case maybe, the degree of ones moral guilt and responsibility. However, apart from any intentions for which they are performed and from any circumstances under which they are done, said procedures remains immoral in themselves. 2. Technological and artificial means can be used in the correction of the defect of nature not in the deviation from or substitution of what is according to the purpose of nature. 3. Only the marital sexual acts are the morally acceptable means of procreating offspring, the said act should not be arbitrarily be excluded from its naturally designed result. 4. It takes courage to adhere to moral principles governing protection of life in the midst of technologically and scientifically-oriented science of health care where everything 5. seems to be seen in terms of its being capably health and life, you are expected to uphold the reproductive health of your clients in the light of human dignity and sanctity of life, at all times.