Ethical Decision-Making in the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process

The intent of the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process (PPCP) is to provide a comprehensive approach to team-based, comprehensive patient-centered care. Consideration of potential ethical issues is a necessary component of comprehensive care provision and is a requirement of accreditation standards, but there is no specific mention of ethics in any of the phases of the PPCP. A more explicit incorporation of ethical decision-making into the PPCP should help faculty involved in teaching ethics and students who need to incorporate ethical considerations into the PPCP in order to provide optimal patient care. The aims of this commentary are to provide faculty with a foundational introduction to ethics and an explicit approach for incorporating ethical decision-making into the PPCP.