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Ethics in goal planning for rehabilitation: a utilitarian perspective

Rehabilitation Teaching and Research Unit, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand, william.levack{at}otago.ac.nz

Background: Past debate on ethics in goal planning for rehabilitation has tended to focus on tensions that can arise between ethical principles; in particular the principles of autonomy and beneficence. When setting goals, clinicians tend to prioritize the wishes of patients, justifying this from the perspective of maximizing patient autonomy. This is tempered by consideration of what is `realistic' and what the pursuit of `unrealistic goals' might be on patient well-being.

Rationale: In this paper it is argued that clinicians also have an ethical obligation to take into account the resource implications of goal planning. Utilitarianism provides one perspective on addressing such issues. A utilitarian approach to goal planning would necessitate a focus on maximizing the benefits of rehabilitation to the whole community served when negotiating goals with individual patients.

Critique: Clinicians may, however, have a number of concerns about utilitarianism. One assumption is that the quality of life of people with severe disability will be judged as being intrinsically low, and therefore valued less from a utilitarian perspective. A second assumption is that for people with severe disability the large effort expended in rehabilitation to achieve small gains cannot possibly repay itself in a utilitarian equation, specifically in financial terms. Evidence from the literature however has demonstrated that in fact both of these assumptions are probably false.

Conclusion: Rehabilitation professionals should not be hesitant to consider utilitarianism as an ethical framework for rehabilitation. In fact, rehabilitation may well gain if people were to use this approach.

This version was published on April 1, 2009

Clinical Rehabilitation, Vol. 23, No. 4, 345-351 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0269215509103286


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