Abstract

BUEDO, Paola  and  SALAS, Manuela. Healthcare at Home: Contributions from Bioethics. rev.latinoam.bioet. [online]. 2019, vol.19, n.2, pp.9-18. ISSN 1657-4702.  https://doi.org/10.18359/rlbi.3619.

The objective of this article is to consider the possible ethical challenges involved in the delivery of healthcare at home from the bioethics perspective. In order to do so a bibliographic review of the Lilacs database, a descriptive work, and a conceptual analysis were carried out. The main results after an analytical distinction show that three ethical categories can be differentiated: home intimacy, personal intimacy (with regards to home) and shared intimacy. The latter, in which the health professional gets actively involved, is the one which requires acting with ethical responsibility since conflicts of interests may arise, particularly in the patients' or their families' affective-emotional realm. The differences may translate into three normative assertions particular to healthcare at home: recognition of the particularity of each home, work on the relational autonomy and the mutual help and cooperation strategy. This article turns of particular interest if we understand bioethics as a discipline that involves critical analysis and systematic reflection of healthcare related practices, since it reflects upon and analyzes the home healthcare practices, a modality that is growing in the region and in the world due to its virtues both for the patient and for the health systems.

Keywords : medical ethics; bioethics; health; disease; autonomy; medical treatment; home.

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