Table 1 Classifications of ‘medical ethics’ according to the practical, consensus-based and the theoretically driven approach, respectively
Practical, consensus-based approach to classification of ‘medical ethics’ | Theoretically derived approach to classification of ‘medical ethics’ |
|---|---|
• Ethics in biomedical research • Ethics in clinical practice • Ethics in public health, medical law, and health policy • Methodology in bioethics | • Studies in empirical/interdisciplinary medical ethics (descriptive reports on ethical issues and experiences as perceived by stakeholders) • Context-dependent theoretical ethics (normative discussions of practical, empirical issues - informed, to a varying extent, by empirical data) • Theory and analysis (theoretical work that justifies general ethical principles for medicine and health promotion or applies theory alone to the analysis of ethical issues) • Epistemology and methodology in medical ethics (discussions of theoretical and empirical premises for establishing ethical knowledge and action (including conceptual analysis), and discussions of methodologies) |