Principles, virtue, and the moral agent: Toward an ethic of patient care for the emergency medical services

To date, practitioners working within the Emergency Medical Service do not benefit from a systematic approach to negotiating ethical conflicts which arise within the clinical encounters of their limited scope of practice. This dissertation argues that a model of moral agency which combines adherence to ethical norms with the inculcation of virtue will be best suited to assist EMTs and paramedics as they render care to their patients. In this model, the standard medical and operational protocols of EMS are viewed as specifications of the bioethical principles of Beneficence, Non-maleficence, Justice and Autonomy. Concurrently, the virtue of prudence as articulated by Thomas Aquinas is upheld as the trait of character best suited to assist these moral agents in their integration of principles and virtue.