Dialysis is a process by which excess waste and water is removed from the blood to maintain a

Every day, numerous people across the world stop their lives for four hours to get hooked up to a dialysis machine at a hospital nearby. This machine helps to remove harmful wastes, toxins, excess salt, and water from their body because unfortunately their body cannot do so for them. These people wait on a list until they can one day receive a kidney transplant because kidney failure has resulted in their body not being able to clean their blood properly. More than 300,000 Americans have kidney failure and use dialysis daily and the statistics are only continuing to grow. I am going to argue that the best to solve this problem is to legalize the regulated sale of organs to better society as a

Ethical Dilemmas in Healthcare Healthcare Values and Ethics Western Governors University Jean Renelien 000809006 January 16, 2018 A1: Potential Ethical Dilemmas As healthcare providers, we are often faced with situations and decisions that require us to make ethical and moral decisions. As a healthcare provider, we take an oath to do no harm and put our patients first. I am a licensed registered respiratory therapist, and in my role, I have a duty to care for my patients and provide adequate treatment and respiratory support that falls within my scope of practice.

A Glasgow Coma Score of 8 or less also is an indication that the patient will need to be intubated soon. Once the tube is placed the ventilation may be useful in controlling the intracranial pressure as an intervention. Hyperventilation is a method used to reduce the carbon dioxide concentration in the vessels causing vasoconstriction which lessens the amount of blood circulating in the brain resulting in a decreased ICP (Zink and McQuillan, 2005). According to Zink and McQuillan, this intervention should only be utilized 24 hours after the initial injury because cerebral blood flow is often reduced at this point and constricting the vessels more may cause ischemia to occur. While using this technique it is important to monitor oxygenation to the brain tissue to assure no irreparable damage is

Jennifer, I fully agree with your statement that “ethics and evidence-based practice are related in that we as nurses, as well as other healthcare professionals, need to promote good and always focus on the well-being of the patient in every aspect of delivery of care”. Not too long ago we had a 50-year-old patient who was admitted with low blood pressure and needed to be on pressors. On the second day of admission the patient suffered a stroke, with paralysis to one side of his body. The patient complained of chest pains to which cardiac enzymes were ordered. The first set was normal, the second set of cardiac enzymes showed his troponin was elevated to which the doctor was paged. He was not worried about it he said, but the nurse on

Available became controversial. While the question of the dialysis machine is still controversial, the health system was caught in another ethical dilemma regarding organ transplantation. Organ transplantation is closely linked to the issue of cleanliness because patients with kidney failure can get an organ transplant as an alternative to hemodialysis. The issue is complicated by the fact Medicare is financed by organ transplant, and there are those who believe that the distribution of rare transplant is not right. There are thousands of terminal patients whose lives can be saved by organ transplantation, but there are no formulas of work that can be used to determine which of the thousands of patients will be given priority. It is left to the discretion of medical officers to decide who is worth saving. The ability to keep someone alive by replacing one or more of their major organs is a splendid achievement of medicine of the 20th century.

An ethical dilemma is a situation in which one need to select from two or more morally acceptable choices or between equally unacceptable actions when one option prevents selection of the other (Ong, Yee & Lee, 2012). An example for an ethical dilemma in the moral values related to health policy is the end of life issues. One of the end of life issues includes withholding and withdrawing the medical treatment. Passive euthanasia is the act of withdrawing life supports or interventions needed to keep a patient alive (American Academy of Physician Assistants, 2014). This is usually done according to the wish of the patient. Patients who do not want to receive resuscitative treatment will opt out of these treatment measures and obtain a do-not-resuscitate

“Cardiac disease is the most common cause of death in the United States” (Graham Nichol, 518). This is the leading number of death with in the US. It is important to know how to perform CPR and not may people know how to so with the help of the fast responding Emergency Medical Services, they have been able to save numerous lives. It has been stated that in the U.S. there are “More than 1,000 patients experience sudden cardiac arrest each day, Treatment for this includes cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and emergency medical services (EMS) that provide CPR” (Graham Nichol, 517). In my EMT class this summer our instructor said there has always been questions weather or not the bystander who is around and knows how to perform CPR should do it. The answer is yes. Because the faster you begin CPR the higher of a chance you have to saving the patients life from dying from a heart attack. It only takes a few minutes before the brain goes brain dead from lack of oxygen to the brain. The point of CPR is to hopefully save the patients life, but that is not always the case. CPR helps circulate blood through the body, brain and other organs to help the patient stay alive while either the ambulance is en route to your location or while the EMT or paramedic is heading to the

Let’s think of it this way, for someone who is waiting for kidney transplantation, it is important to clear his or her body from normal metabolic waste. Don’t forget that the kidney is not only responsible for filtering the metabolic waste and balancing fluid and electrolytes, but is also responsible for the secretion of hormones. These are erythropoietin which is responsible for red blood cell production and renin angiotensin aldosterone which is critical for maintaining the body’s sodium level. This in turn, controls the blood pressure. This process is being done without our knowledge hourly. (Lewis 667, 765, 766, 1139, 1207) But for those who have dysfunctional kidneys, this process must be done manually. For example, for clearing the body from metabolic waste, patients much go through a treatment called dialysis. This treatment could decrease the physical ability of the patients to go through the transplant surgery when they find the kidney. (Forbes) Now just imagine that you have found a perfect match of a kidney but the surgeon cannot transplant it because you are too physically weak to go through this surgery. If it was me, I would fight this current process so that I could save me or my loved one’s life. It is the core of our human nature. When we are in trouble, that’s when we think of finding a solution to get us out of it. Unfortunately, sometimes this approach will have very serious

I can recall a clinical incident where as a telemetry trained nurse my ethical belief was placed into action. During one of my many night shifts at work, I was assigned a patient whose heart rate was sustained in the 130's while the patient was asleep on her bed with a systolic

In the Healthcare field there are ethical issues that arise daily. From balancing care quality to determining end of life issues, healthcare professionals are constantly trying to find a place of balance. Healthcare professionals do not have an easy job, they face challenging decisions every single day determining what is best for the patient and the organization. When an ethical dilemma arises within a healthcare organization, ethical decision making can help make an onerous decision easier.

The ethical dilemma that I have ever encountered was dealing with a DO NOT RESUSCITATE (DNR) situation at a previous place of employment. The 67 year-old male patient was admitted from the hospital on a DNR status, but there was no physician order for DNR or legal documents in the chart. As the shift went on, his medical condition had gotten worst and he coded. Now the question was whether or not to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) since the patient has a DNR status. Without the physician order for the DNR on file, I had to make a decision to active the code blue button and performed CPR with the other nurses and staff team members on the floor. The family was notified after the fact and the patient’s daughter was not happy. She

Healthcare professionals will be faced with ethical dilemmas throughout their career, particularly in the hospital environment. Having an education regarding professional healthcare ethics will provide some direction in how to best address these dilemmas at a time when either the patient or their family is in need of making decisions for themselves or their family member. It can be difficult for healthcare professionals to weigh professional protocol against their own personal beliefs and ethical understandings when determining critical care for their patient.

You may be familiar with the term dialysis or have seen dialysis clinics in your travels around town. Dialysis clinics offer what is called conventional or intermittent hemodialysis. Conventional dialysis is performed on chronic kidney failure patients. The client lives a normal life at home and visits the clinic 3 times a week for their treatments. The treatments are usually 3-4 hours long. During these sessions waste product is removed from a large amount of blood at a rapid rate. The patient must be able to tolerate such a fast removal of fluid from their system and be in stable health. During these sessions blood samples are usually sent to the laboratory to be analyzed and reviewed by the medical doctor who specializes in kidneys. This specialist is called a nephrologist. Recovery from chronic kidney disease only happens with a kidney

With the advancement of modern technology, it is now easier to keep someone alive for a longer period of time. Though the topic of life support stirs up a lot of controversy because some say that if a person is brain dead then what is the point of putting them on life support, is it not better to relieve them and let them go? I believe that in a situation like this it is better to let that individual to go because they are in pain whether they able to say it or not. Though on this decision of putting someone on life support is not opposed by the doctors, they do recommend that not putting the specific patient on it just because it would be better for the patient. These are just some of the many situations that the doctors deal with ethically daily in their line of

Ethics, in medicine, is described as applying one’s morals and values to healthcare decisions (Fremgen 2012). It requires a critical-thinking approach that examines important considerations such as fairness for all patients, the impact of the decision on society and the future repercussions of the decision (Fremgen 2012). According to Fremgen (2012), bioethics concerns ethical issues discussed in the perspective of advanced medical technology. Goldman and Schafer (2012) state bioethical issues that arise in medical practice include antibiotics, dialysis, transplantation, intensive care units, issues of genetics, reproductive choices and termination of care. In clinical practice the most common issues revolve around informed consent, termination of life-sustaining treatments, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and conflicts of interest (Goldman, Schafer 2012).