Utilitarian Theory: The Case Of Memorial Hospital

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most deadliest natural disasters in the history of the United States of America. At least 1,245 people in the hurricane and subsequent flooding. In reading the excerpt from Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink, there are certain ethical and legal issues that arise and ones that holds all those medical and health professionals accountable for their actions. Dr. Ana Pou was one of the head doctors who took a leadership role at Memorial Hospital after the backup generators had failed and the rescue teams were few and far between. A team of medical personnel which included Dr. Pou had categorized the remaining patients into an evacuating category. They felt that the most sick patients would be evacuated last because of available resources and essentially decided who would live and who would die. Dr. Pou denies her actions and states that she did what she felt was the right thing to do? But as Sherri Finks poses the question in her article “where is the line between comfort care and mercy killings”.

One of bioethical of the bioethical principle implicated in the case of Memorial Hospital is the beneficence. The principle of beneficence expresses an obligation to provide benefits

According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the Affordable care Act from President Obama gives consumers more options and benefits when seeking coverage from insurance company. It offers lowering cost as well as gets more access to high quality of care. This law creates Patient’s Bill of Rights that is very effective to protect consumers from any abuses or fraud from insurance company. Some preventive services are available to many Americans especially Medicare recipients at no cost. Not just that, they also receive a special offer of 50 percent discount for any well-known drugs in the market place under Medicare named “donut hole.” The Affordable Care Act helps other organizations and programs to convince healthcare providers

In the wake of a natural disaster, people are forced to realize they may not make it out alive; this was the thought of over one hundred and eighty patients who were at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina hit. Sheri Fink’s Deadly Choices at Memorial tells the story of what doctors and nurses had to do when the hospital, which was being used as a shelter, lost all power and had to evacuate all one hundred and eighty patients in August of 2005. Usually most people have time to think about their choices so they are certain they are making the correct one, but in a time of crisis the doctors and nurses on staff at Memorial had to make harsh decisions about who of the one hundred and eighty patients they would evacuate, who would go first, who would go last and who would have to stay behind. Fink’s article makes

The primary ethical issue related to cost containment in health care is distributive justice. The reality of limited resources necessitates their allocation to yield the greatest good for the greatest number of participants. Finding the balance between provision of value in health care and cost containment remains a fundamental ethical challenge for health care reform. Ultimately, there should be effective ways to contain the already high and steadily increasing costs of health care, it will become more and more difficult to provide care in the current or in a reformed health care system (American College of Emergency Physicians ,

6. True or false? Beneficence is a principle of ethics that assumes that the healthcare

The issue of preferential treatment for very important persons (VIPs) is an authentic ethical concern in healthcare. During the H1N1 pandemic, members of Canada’s Calgary Flames Hockey Team received vaccination prior to the general public, which culminated in public indignation amongst the Canadian citizens (Glouberman, 2014).

However, as time went on, several problems arose which had to do with the principle of justice in healthcare. In America, it is the accepted norm that it is unjust to treat one person better or worse than another person, in similar circumstances (Tong, 2007, p.29). In an attempt

Beneficence is the ethical principle of doing good unto others. Healthcare professionals display this principle by:

The healthcare industry is unlike other industries, it is complex and complicate which requires high fixed costs and intense investment in capital and labor expenses. Innovations that improve the proposition of health care such as lower costs and better outcome without a substantial wait time can be timely. While the costs of health care are expensive in the United States, people find an alternative way to access medical care and procedure in a foreign country. The phenomenon when people travel to another country seeking medical treatment or procedure is considered "medical tourism." Medical tourism is not a new concept, "the rise of neoliberalism and economic globalization in the past few decades has resulted in health care being increasingly

Dr. Peter Mack, a surgeon in the Singapore General Hospital, discusses utilitarianism from a different perspective, relating it to the dilemma often faced by physicians where they have to choose between what is good for one and what is good for many. Even though physicians are trained to treat each individual patient as an isolated case that deserves equal attention and allocation, the harsh reality is that there are times when healthcare professionals are faced with limited time and resources, and must decide how distribute them fairly (Mack). He justifies his decision to call on Utilitarianism in such cases, mentioning three of its components of maximization, consequentialism, aggregation, and welfare.

Everyday, healthcare professionals are faced with ethical dilemmas in their workplace. These ethical dilemmas need to be addressed in order to provide the best care for the patient. Healthcare professionals have to weigh their own personal beliefs, professional beliefs, ethical understandings, and several other factors to decide what the best care for their patient might be. This is illustrated in Mrs. Smith’s case. Mrs. Smith is an 85 year old who has suffered from a large stroke that extends to both of her brains hemispheres which has left her unconscious. She only has some brain stem reflexes and requires a ventilator for support. She is unable to communicate how she wishes to proceed with her healthcare. Mrs. Smith’s children, Sara and Frank have different views regarding their mother’s plan of care. The decision that needs to be made is whether to prolong Mrs. Smith’s life, as Sara would like to do, or stop all treatments and care, as Frank feels his mother would want. In the healthcare field, there are situations similar to this case that happen daily where moral and ethical judgment is necessary to guide the decision that would be best for the patient. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss, compare and contrast the personal and professional values, ethical principles, and legal issues regarding Mrs. Smith’s quality of life and further plan of care.

Hacienda, entrenchment strategies in healthcare companies are very difficult indeed, particularly when trying to determine whether or not the decision is ethical or not. According to Parnell (2014), the utilitarian view of ethics is concerned primarily with only the outcomes and consequences of decision. Gustafson (2013) further expands on this view by explaining that a common description of the utilitarian view is that an action is considered ethical if it does the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Parnell (2014) points out that this view is difficult to apply because numerous consequences may be expected to develop. For instance, a healthcare organization’s performance may be suffering due to a location in a high-need, low-income

The broadcast “Playing God: The Broadcast” addresses the events of multiple emergency situations in which healthcare workers triaged health care resources. These decisions directly affected not only the quality of a patient’s life but even cost lives. The broadcast discusses three emergency situations that took place in different countries at different times. In each of these situations, healthcare workers had to utilize their resources and give the best care to each and every patient. The core guidelines of healthcare, seen and interpreted within these situations, are the four principles of health care ethics: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice. Emergency situations, discussed in the broadcast, were reciprocated by a triage

Since, the utilitarian theory is based mainly upon the feelings of the maximum amount of happiness by an individual or group this can sometime lead to conflicts for the EMS provider or providers working in the field worldwide. Conflict can occur easily in the EMS setting since a majority of the time our calls revolve around an individual's or one of their family members worst possible situations, because they are either injured,ill or