Primum Non Nocere: When Is It Our Moral Duty to Do More for Our Trauma Patients in Need?

Abstract

In an increasingly complicated healthcare environment, it is often difficult for providers to clearly understand and define for themselves what their true duty is to their patients—both to individual patients and to the collective population of patients they serve. This is especially true regarding the care we provide to our violently injured patients. These patients incur not only physical trauma, but they may also suffer from both preexisting and posttraumatic mental, emotional, and spiritual distress. When is it enough to passively “do no harm,” and when must a practitioner proactively make an effort to effect change? How does our ethical responsibility differ from our moral responsibility? We suggest that by returning to the core meanings of what we do, i.e., “care” for others, work toward “cure,” and work to ameliorate “hurt” and ultimately try to “heal,” we can better characterize what our moral responsibilities might be.