Ethics in Flatliners - Essay Example

Ethics in Flatliners Flatliners is one of the movies that depict the theme of ethics among other themes. Flatliners explores the issue of life and death in an articulate and ingenious way. The characters in the movie, led by Nelson seek to experience life after death by “flatlining.” The whole experience by Nelson and his medical students is centered on ethics. At one instance, Rachel Manus told Julia Roberts that she is doing much better. This paper briefly discusses why it was ethical for Rachel Manus to say that.

The scenario happened when Manus was treating Julia as one of her patients. Manus, a medical student with Nelson, was mandated to oversee the recovery of patients. It happened that one of the patients, Julia, was struggling with recovery. In their conversation, Manus told Julia that she was doing much better in recovery. Although Julia was not in the best route to recovery, Manus encouraged her. This was an ethical approach. It is undeniable that telling the truth is one of the primary codes of ethics especially in professional field.

However, there are times when truth will do more harm than good. For instance, telling patients that they are not likely to recover from an illness will surely jeopardize their recovery. Therefore, it is ethical to give them encouraging words that would stimulate recovery even when there is little hope. In this context, Manus was ethically justified to tell Julia Roberts that she was doing much better. This is because she had good intentions when she was saying the words.