7.2.4 Beneficence and nonmaleficence
Beneficence is pronounced ‘be-neffi-sens’.
Nonmaleficence is pronounced ‘nonma-leffi-sens’.
In this section you will be able to learn about two important ethical concepts which may be new to you, but which are relevant for your practice. These are called beneficence and nomaleficence. The term beneficence tells you about ‘doing good’ for your client, for instance by providing immunization.
From your own experience of receiving or witnessing health services at community level, can you suggest some examples of health interventions that demonstrate beneficence by health workers?
We cannot know for sure what examples you suggested, but here are some you may have thought of:
- Providing antenatal care for pregnant women.
- Teaching new mothers about breastfeeding.
- Health education about family planning, personal hygiene, preparing nutritious food with little money, etc.
- Immunization.
On the other hand, the concept of nonmaleficence tells you to ‘do no harm’ either intentionally or unintentionally to your clients, for instance, not abandoning a client who is in need of your services. As you have seen in Case Study 7.1, Chaltu must not abandon Almaz and leave her to manage her problems without professional help. However, there are circumstances in which it is impossible to ‘do good’ and ‘avoid doing harm’ all at the same time. For instance, you may plan to provide birth control to all the women in your locality who are in need of it, but resource availability, cultural beliefs of the community, clients’ reaction to the service and other factors can limit you from doing good to the greatest number. Moreover, you cannot always avoid doing harm to a client; for instance, in times when a communicable disease arises in your vicinity, you may have to suggest isolating individuals with the infection against their will to contain the spread of the disease and for the good of the majority.
7.2.3 Informed consent