New Perspectives on the Theory of Justice: Implications for Physical Therapy Ethics and Clinical Practice

Recent revisions of physical therapy codes of ethics have included a new emphasis concerning health inequities and social injustice. This emphasis reflects the growing evidence regarding the importance of social determinants of health, epidemiological trends for health service delivery, and the enhanced participation of physical therapists in shaping health care reform in a number of international contexts. This perspective article suggests that there is a "disconnect" between the societal obligations and aspirations expressed in the revised codes and the individualist ethical frameworks that predominantly underpin them. Primary health care is an approach to health care arising from an understanding of the nexus between health and social disadvantage that considers the health needs of patients as expressive of the health needs of the communities of which they are members. It is proposed that re-thinking ethical frameworks expressed in codes of ethics can both inform and underpin practical strategies for working in primary health care. This perspective article provides a new focus on the ethical principle of justice: the ethical principle that arguably remains the least consensually understood and developed in the ethics literature of physical therapy. A relatively recent theory of justice known as the "capability approach to justice" is discussed, along with its potential to assist physical therapy practitioners to further develop moral agency in order to address situations of health inequity and social injustice in clinical practice.