PHI-413V four principles case study: planning guide
PHI-413V's 'Applying the Four Principles' assignment is a two-part instrument, not an essay: a chart that files the Healing and Autonomy case's facts under autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice, then a 500-word evaluation of how principlism reads through a Christian worldview.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 11, 2026
What is PHI-413V's four principles assignment really asking?
The assignment hands you a template — the 'Applying the Four Principles: Case Study' document — and the marks follow the template's own division of labour. Part 1 is data organisation, not argument: the chart formalises the four-boxes approach by sorting what actually happens in the Healing and Autonomy case under each principle of biomedical ethics. The discipline being tested is restraint — a chart cell should contain case facts that bear on that principle, not your opinions about them. When the parents' decision delays treatment, that fact belongs under autonomy (their surrogate decision-making) and under nonmaleficence (the harm that followed); noticing that one fact files under two principles is exactly the kind of reading the chart exists to teach.
Part 2 is where the course's distinctive question lives, and it is worded precisely: describe how principlism would be applied according to the Christian worldview. That is not an invitation to state your own view of the case, nor to argue that religion should override medicine. It asks whether the four principles rank differently inside a Christian narrative — whether beneficence and nonmaleficence, read through concepts like stewardship of the body and neighbour-love, take a different priority than the autonomy-first ordering common in secular Western bioethics. The strongest answers name the ordering they defend and support it from the topic study materials, because the brief twice tells you those materials are the required evidence base. Answers that instead debate whether faith healing works are answering a question the template never asked, and they spend the tight word budget where no marks are waiting.
Two administrative details are stated and easy to lose: the evaluation is capped at 500 words in total across its questions, and APA style is not required — though the brief still expects solid academic writing, and the submission goes through LopesWrite, so quotation without attribution will surface. Read the cap as a design choice rather than a leniency: five hundred words across several questions leaves roughly a paragraph per answer, which is enough for one supported claim each and nothing else.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Sort the events of the Healing and Autonomy case under autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice without editorialising, recognising when one fact bears on two principles.
- 02Explain principlism as prima facie obligations that must be specified and balanced when they conflict, rather than absolute rules.
- 03Articulate how a Christian worldview might reorder the four principles — stewardship and neighbour-love against autonomy-first orderings — with support from the topic study materials.
- 04Write to a strict 500-word cap by answering the template's questions directly rather than building an essay around them.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Part 1: the completed chart from the 'Applying the Four Principles: Case Study' document, organising the case data under the four principles of biomedical ethics.
- 02Part 2: answers to the template's evaluation questions in a total of 500 words, describing how principlism would be applied according to the Christian worldview.
- 03Support drawn from the topic study materials, as the brief requires — APA is stated as not required, but solid academic writing is expected.
- 04Submission through LopesWrite, per the brief.
How should the chart and the 500-word evaluation divide the work?
Read the case for facts, not verdicts
Before touching the chart, list the case's decision points — the parents' initial choice, the deterioration, the transplant question — as neutral events with dates and actors, so every chart cell can point at something that happened.
The four-boxes chart
File each event under autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. Where an event files under two principles, enter it in both and let the duplication stand — that overlap is the analytical point.
The conflict the case is built on
Open Part 2 by naming the collision principlism must resolve here: parental autonomy exercised on a child's behalf against beneficence and nonmaleficence toward that child. State that principlism treats these as prima facie duties requiring balancing, not a lexical rule.
The Christian-worldview ordering
Answer the stated question: describe how the principles would be prioritised within the Christian narrative, using stewardship, the body as entrusted rather than owned, and neighbour-love as the organising concepts from the topic materials.
Compression pass
Cut Part 2 to the 500-word cap by deleting introductions and restatements of the questions, keeping one supported claim per answer.
Which principlism sources support the Healing and Autonomy analysis?
Recommended databases
- Course topic study materials (primary, per the brief)
- University of Washington Bioethics Tools
- PubMed
Search sequence
- 1.Re-read the assigned 'Case Study: Healing and Autonomy' and the topic study materials first — the brief makes them the required evidence base for Part 2.
- 2.Read the UW four-boxes paradigm page to see how case data files under topics before principles — it is the practical tool the chart formalises.
- 3.Read a short principlism overview for the prima facie / balancing vocabulary Part 2 needs to describe conflicts precisely.
- 4.Skim the four-quadrants application review on PubMed for a worked example of a real case organised this way, noting how facts rather than opinions populate each quadrant.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Paradigm (4 boxes)
University of Washington Department of Bioethics & Humanities · 2023
The canonical description of the four-boxes case-organisation tool the chart formalises — use it to understand what belongs in a cell. It organises by topic (indications, preferences, quality of life, context), so map its boxes onto the assignment's four principles rather than copying them.
- 02
Principlism in Biomedical Ethics: Respect for Autonomy, Non-Maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice
1000-Word Philosophy · 2021
A compact, citable statement of each principle and of how principlism balances prima facie duties in conflict — the vocabulary Part 2's evaluation needs. It does not address religious worldviews; the course's topic materials carry that part.
- 03
Four Principles
UK Clinical Ethics Network · 2022
A clinical-practice framing of the four principles with worked questions per principle — useful as a checklist when deciding which chart cell a case fact belongs in.
- 04
The "four quadrants" approach to clinical ethics case analysis; an application and review
Journal of Medical Ethics (via PubMed) · 2008
A peer-reviewed application of quadrant-based case analysis to a real surgical case — a model for keeping the chart factual. Cite it if you discuss the method's strengths or limits in Part 2.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Filling chart cells with judgements ('the parents were wrong to delay') instead of case facts that bear on the principle — the chart is a data-organisation tool and is marked as one.
- Writing Part 2 as a personal opinion on faith and medicine rather than answering the stated question: how principlism is applied according to the Christian worldview, evidenced from the topic study materials.
- Blowing the 500-word cap by introducing and concluding each answer — the template's questions want direct answers, and the cap is across all of them combined.
- Treating autonomy as the automatic trump: the case is built so that surrogate autonomy, beneficence toward the child, and nonmaleficence pull apart, and a strong evaluation names that conflict instead of dissolving it.
- Adding formal APA apparatus the brief explicitly says is not required, then losing time that Part 2's word-restricted analysis needed.
Submission checklist
- The official PHI-413V template document is used, not a self-made table.
- Every chart cell cites something that happens in the Healing and Autonomy case, and facts bearing on two principles appear in both.
- Part 2 totals 500 words or fewer across all its answers.
- Each Part 2 answer references at least one topic study material by name.
- The evaluation describes the Christian-worldview application as the question asks, rather than arguing for or against religious belief.
- Uploaded to LopesWrite before the deadline.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.