Abstract
Over recent decades, the pharmacy profession and the pharmacist's role have changed significantly. Pharmacy practice gradually expanded over the traditional activities of the profession, such as compounding of medicines or medicine supply, and adopted a more clinical and patient-oriented role.
Subsequently, the pharmacy profession converted from a solely fact-based into a knowledge-based and value-based profession. Moral judgement is present in several facets of pharmacy practice.
The professional ethics of pharmacy are predominantly shaped by professional codes and personal values and principles. The four principles of Principlism, autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence, developed into the most dominant approach in bioethics worldwide.
Progressively, both empirical and non-empirical research has shown that most moral dilemmas in pharmacy practice are analysed by using the four principles. Pharmacists are confronted with moral dilemmas springing from disagreements on ethical attitudes or from conflicting values, norms and interests among different parties, such as pharmacists and patients or pharmacists and physicians.
The ethical attitudes of pharmacists in response to ethical dilemmas during their daily practice, such as disclosure of patient information, dispensation of emergency hormonal contraceptives to women and allocation of scarce resources during drug shortages are of high interest for this paper. The professional pharmacy ethics in relation to particular ethical issues of the pharmacy profession, such as the above-mentioned, can be approached through the lens of various ethical theories, such as Kantian (deontology) or Aristotelian (virtue) ethics.
However, this paper proves that they are also compatible through the scope of the Ethics of Social Consequences (ESC), signalling a novel attempt. The ESC is a contemporary non-utilitarian consequentialist moral theory with a case-oriented approach.
Its primary value structure consists of humanity, human dignity and moral right. Its major tool to assess morality of an action are positive social consequences but in some cases motives and intentions are also important.
ESC shall be utilised by pro-active moral agents with advanced intellectual capabilities as a flexible and dynamic ethical framework that provides alternative actions that yield positive social consequences. This particular feature, makes the ESC ideal for professions with advanced intellectual demands, such as pharmacists.
A pharmacist's moral judgement, should utilise the case-oriented approach of the ESC to lead to an action that will result in positive social consequences, in accordance with the values of humanity and human dignity. Therefore, the ESC can successfully provide fruitful solutions to ethical issues of the pharmacy profession.