Advancing an ethical framework for long-term care

This article represents an effort to formulate an ethical framework for long-term care with the explicit purpose of providing a catalyst to promote further discourse and expand consideration of what an ethic of long-term care might entail. Grounding the discussion, an introduction to traditional ethical philosophy is presented, focusing mainly on the fundamentals of deontological and teleological ethical theories. Attention then shifts to a review of the more frequently cited principles found in the long-term care ethics literature, followed by a critique of the current reliance upon principlism to resolve ethical dilemmas in long-term care. In response to this criticism, an agent-driven ethical framework stressing dignity and respect for personhood, drawn from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, is advanced. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc.