Patient safety and the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence

Abstract

Patient safety actions represent a means to avoid unsafe practices during medical care, establishing rules to instruct health personnel not to be negligent or carry out behaviors that produce or increase the risks inherent to medical practice. On the other hand, bioethics constitutes a discipline to protect the dignity of the patient, against interventions in their entirety to recover, improve or preserve health. In particular, the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence of so-called principalist bioethics are fulfilled with those actions that are aimed at avoiding harm to the patient, through the observance of rules closely related to said principles.