Quality of life in health care from the perspective of medical ethics

Medical practices are based on "beneficence" that is duty about providing all kinds of support for patient's benefit by the physician. Today, it is not only healing the disease but also improving the quality of life of persons, within the scope of this duty. Accordingly, it is important to determine the changes in quality of life. Recently, the magnitude of efforts in measuring health-related quality of life is increasing in order to reveal these changes. The "providing benefit to the individual" approach lies on the basis of measuring quality of life and this assigns an ethical value on the measurement act. Thus, usage of these instruments, as beneficial tools instead of a research or a data collecting tool, and application of the results taken from the measurements, beneficial for the patient is important. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate and examine the concept of health-related quality of life and its measurability, the usability of the measurement outcomes in clinical considerations and especially to evaluate the accompanying problems revealed this process in the context of medical ethics. In this thesis which is a conceptual work, different points from general to specific, has been adopted. In this context it was started by the concept of quality of life and then analyzed health-related quality of life. After the assessment of measuring health-related quality of life in general, it was considered its own specific ethical dimension of the issue and was discussed on some examples of it. In the light of this assessment, it was found that the areas of the measurement of quality of life are not reliable in all circumstances, and the measurements may lead ethical conflicts and abuses of the principles of medical ethics. Measuring the phenomenon of the quality of life and becoming this measurement to the basis for clinical decisions, could bring the dangers of "objectifying the patient", "discriminating among the patients" and the dangers of a "slippery slope". In using of measurement results in the treatment process the subjective feature of quality of life, regarding the individual as the aim of the measurement and not as a tool, realization of the principles of respect for autonomy and beneficence should be taken in mind.