Ethical Decision Making In Healthcare

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

Individual ethics are important in decision-making within the health care industry. One of the main reasons for that is because often ethical dilemmas occur at lower decision-making levels, and this means that the decision is being made by one person, facing a difficult situation that must be resolved quickly. Another reason that individual ethics are important in health care is that often a manager is unaware that there is an ethical dilemma. Thus, by failing to recognize the ethical dilemma, the manager is resolving the dilemma by his or her actions without realizing that an ethical decision is being made (Mintz, 2011). This very much puts the individual's ethical compass at the center of the decision, because the default decision is the one that is being made, regardless of the ethical implications. If the person is generally ethical, the decision will probably be the right one; if the person lacks ethical standards, the decision could be very poor as result.

Professionals in all fields experience ethical problems especially in health care. In fact, ethical issues arise in government, industry, science, and academia (Steneck, 2004). Ethical issues can be see in every decision making process which often involves competing goals and motives (Werhane, 2002) Ethical decision making (EDM) requires a number of complex cognitive processes in which people must assess the effectiveness of alternative courses of action in the context of their understanding of the problem and the relevant rules and guidelines involved (Miner & Petocz, 2003). Occupational therapists (OT) have increased autonomy to meet the clients and provide unrestricted practice in today's healthcare

According to the AMA Journal of Ethics" ( ), Healthcare ethics committees (HCECs) is a body, "that mediate ethical disputes and dilemmas in patient care settings. HCEC's primary function is policy development, ethics education, and ethics consultation. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ethical committee is called the "Integrated Ethics (IE) program. The IE's functions are education, policy, consultation. They focus on improving ethical leadership, preventive ethics, and ethics consultation. Ethical committees can be used as a mediating force that can be utilized by patients, and healthcare staff including nurses, physicians, and healthcare administrators (Geppart, ). Members of an ethics committee usually include health care stakeholders,

Nurses are constantly challenged by changes which occur in their practice environment and are under the influence of internal or external factors. Due to the increased complexity of the health system, nowadays nurses are faced with ethical and legal decisions and often come across dilemmas regarding patient care. From this perspective a good question to be raised would be whether or not nurses have the necessary background, knowledge and skills to make appropriate legal and ethical decisions. Even though most nursing programs cover the ethical and moral issues in health care, it is questionable if new nurses have the depth of knowledge and understanding of these issues and apply them in their practice

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.

Child abuse is a serious preventable health concern in the United States (CDC, 2015). The CDC (2015) reports studies indicate 1 in 4 children suffer from maltreatment in their lifetime. More than 1500 children died from abuse or neglect in the United States in 2013 (CDC, 2015). The case study entitled Make the Best Choice deals with three times on maltreatment of a child, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse (CDC, 2015). The purpose of this post is to discuss the ethical principle involved in the aforementioned case study. I will also discuss the nurse’s ethical and legal obligations to the patient and the options available to the nurse. Finally, I will discuss my opinion of the case study.

“Healthcare professional faces complex ethical dilemmas in the workplace.” (Murray, 2010). There is an expectation that a professional working in a healthcare field demonstrates the highest degree of moral character. A morally courteous person stands up for right things even if it means to do alone. The final goal of demonstrating moral character is to protect ethical value and put ethical principles into action. There are various moral characters which I would like to see in the employees. I would like to see a healthcare professional having characteristics such as professionalism, honesty, kindness and commitment (towards their patient). For a professional working in an acute care facility, demonstrating a high level of all the above four

29. In your opinion what responsibilities, if any, does a physician or other health care practitioner have toward difficult family members or other third parties who interfere with a patient’s medical care?

Ethical decision making is something that involves choice and balance and is usually one of the most difficult decisions that has to be made in certain cases. Many factors have contributed to the growing concern in healthcare

As a project manager, the most important rule I have to obey is to be honest.

The ethical decision making process is based on moral rules and unchanging principles that are derived from reason and can be applied universally. These universal rules and principles must be considered separate from the consequences or the facts of a particular situation. (McWay, 2014). Health care workers face ethical issues and have to use the ethical decision making process to determine what is best for their patients.

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.

Additionally to Emotivism, formalism, and consequentialism, several other Ethical systems are used in the United States, some existed before the Enlightenment thinking.

Nurses often encountered various ethical dilemmas in the practice setting. Both virtue ethics and caring ethics support good ethical decision making for nurses (Park, 2012, p. 149) but these are inadequate to assist in solving an ethical dilemma (Park, 2012, p. 149). For that reason an ethical decision making tool is helpful for the nurses or clinicians to come up with an ethical decision (Kelly, 2012, p. 571) that allows them to gather information, identify any gap of understanding on the issue or the disagreements between the involved parties through a clear communication (Park, 2012, p. 140). Several authors presented an ethical decision making processes (Park, 2012, p. 141), here presented the two processes that can be applied in resolving an ethical dilemma. One example of ethical decision making process is the DECIDE model by Thompson, Melia & Boyd (Allen, Chapman, Francis, & O’Connor, 2008, p. 5) and the Integrated ethical decision-making model which was derived from the combination of the different ethical decision-making models strengths (Park, 2012, p. 140). These two ethical decision-making model steps are identical to each but differ on the detailed instruction on how the steps are to be done or used in actual case. By comparing the two models the integrated ethical decision-making model have a detailed instruction. The