Content analysis of holistic ethics

Although biomedical ethical principles are appropriate to evaluate the practice of conventional or Western medicine, they may not be appropriate to evaluate the practice of complementary therapies (CTs) because the world view of CTs has different goals than those of Western medicine. This qualitative research study examined the suggestions of 11 practicing RNs from across the United States as to what principles should be included in a list of holistic ethical principles. Six themes were extracted from the data, which include safety, scope of practice, cultural diversity, access, collaboration, and spirituality. To validate their utility, the identified set of holistic ethical principles where applied to case studies of holistic ethical dilemmas that involving specific CTs. The authors suggest that the set of six holistic ethical principles could be used to evaluate the virtues and potential infractions of the use of CTs.