title: [Approaches to ethical decision making in correlation with medical quality management].
abstract: The subject as well as the tool of quality management deal with ethical questions. It is shown what ethics can contribute to quality management. Three different concepts of assessing an act (consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics) are presented and their consequences for the everyday decisions of physicians are described. Ethical considerations are made about the notion quality in the framework of quality management, about the function of economical aspects in quality-planning, and about the role of guidelines as instruments for quality-improvement and -assurance.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin, Universität zu Köln.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Woopen
mesh_terms: D003363:Cost Control; D004989:Ethics; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000191:economics; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000191:economics; D017749:Total Quality Management / Q000191:economics