Ethical Issues In Health Care Essay

There are numerous ethical issues that a medical assistant may encounter in a daily office or hospital setting. It is unethical to have a conversation with a fellow coworker regarding a patient. The patient may overhear or worse they may be related to someone in the office. It is no one’s business as to why the patient had an appointment. Another unethical behavior that is unacceptable is foul language in front of the patients. They do not need to hear that kind of language under any circumstances. When a patient comes in to see you and smells of urine or alcohol, be courteous to the patient and do not judge the patient. This patient may not have the means to shower daily or they may be sick and are unaware of the odor. A good

emerge as a professional entity until the beginning of the 20th century, with the progress in biomedical science. Since then, the

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

This report will be analysing the policies and legislations guiding the service user and the organisation caring for them. The importance of ethics in social care will also be explained .the case study will be discussed using the policies and legislations provided by the government.

In today’s health care industry providing quality patient care and avoiding harm are the foundations of ethical practices. However, many health care professionals are not meeting the guidelines or expectations of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) or obeying the organizations code of ethics policies, especially with the use of electronic medical records (EMR). Many patients fear that their personal health information (PHI) will be disclosed by hackers or unauthorized users. According to Carel (2010) “ethical concerns shroud the

When it comes to our health, a good healthcare plan is a very important subject for all individuals. Some even argue that it is a basic right to have one. Bernie Sanders stated, “Healthcare must be recognized as a right, not a privilege. Every man, woman, and child in our country should be able to access the health care they need regardless of their income…” (“Issues: Medicare for All”). However, reality tells us a whole different story. America is one of the most developed countries in the world with some of the best medical care. Yet, how can the people enjoy the benefits when it is almost unaffordable to most. People are afraid to fall sick just because they are afraid of how much it would cost. However, sometimes a doctor or hospital visit is unavoidable. In most cases, it comes at a great price, especially to the middle class and the elderly. Wealthy individuals are likely to reap the benefits of having an expensive healthcare plan, while the rest may suffer from the unimaginable cost of treatments, or even worse, live a risky life without insurance. An effective solution to this problem would be a Universal Healthcare System. This would ensure that all people have equal and affordable health coverage, centralized healthcare records for all individuals which will help easy diagnosis by doctors and reduce the intensive labor costs of medical billing. Moreover, it may boost the economy by freeing business from providing expensive healthcare benefits to workers.

Westmount Nursing Inc. is a for profit chain with seven different nursing homes. It has a grown from a small few bed facility to a facility with 4 different divisions that made to help make seniors more independent. The Westmount Nursing Homes were in search for a chief executive officer and president, which was filled by Shirley Carpenter. After Shirley Carpenter came on to the company, many changes were made and implemented. Some implementations were successfully, but she was also challenged with many problems with the Union Federation of Nurses and the Board of directors regarding wages and total quality management implementation. My recommendation would be for Shirley to stop the implementation of total quality management and focus on

Such a touchy and emotional topic in everyones life is dealing with the declining health of a family family member. Nobody wants to see a loved one go through the pain and suffering of a disease or illness and to also be left with the burden of facing the most difficult choices you will ever have to make regarding their medical care. Life extending medical technology and procedures are extremely expensive. A recent Mount Sinai School of Medicine study found out that out of pocket expenses for Medicare recipients during the five years before their death amount to about $39,000 for individuals, $51,000 for couples, and up to $66,000 for people with long term illnesses like Alzheimer’s. There is great debate whether or not these medical procedures such as transplants should be rationed based on age due to the costs and limited resources. In this discussion, I will go over the unethical element of age-based rationing and introduce a number of specific policy ideas to combat this problem.

Having an effective ethics and compliance in health care training course for employees within a company is a positive effort to keep not only the company running strong and efficient, but also developing standards for other companies to follow who are trying to create a more applicable format for corporate regulations. According to federal guidelines, designated and regulated by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), a company in compliance to federal healthcare standards will have effective education of employees, investigation measures, discipline and enforcement measures, intervention of violation standards, strong internal audit standards, compliance officers and staff, and lastly, written company standards and policies that is freely available to all employees.

There are many ethical issues in the healthcare field. These issues range from insurance coverage, senior care, childhood immunizations, beneficence, abortion, medicinal marijuana, honesty and medical research (Fritzsche, D., 2004). Today we will discuss the ethical concerns in only one aspect of heath care and that topic is research (Benatar, S., 2000). Medical research is necessary in order to make strides in health care, introduce new medications, to discover new symptoms and disorders and to test new treatment options for current medical problems. Students of medicine, universities and pharmaceutical companies conduct this research primarily. Much of this research is time consuming and costly, therefore obtaining funding is not

The phenomenon of death is a complex event wrought with controversy both medically and legally. Because the organ systems do not shut down all at once, it is difficult to determine the exact moment of death or the decide how the laws apply to the deceased individual. Although the advancement of medical knowledge and technology significantly decreases errors in when to call the time of death; it has also, paradoxically, increased ethical problems between families and doctors. Since the limitations of modern treatments are not well known to the public, families sometimes continue to demand intervention for recently deceased patients against physician recommendations or patient wishes. Moreover, the laws and hospital policies provide poor guidance for handling complaints, and thusly cannot adequately resolve disputes due to vast inconsistencies. To ensure the protection of patient and family wishes without overriding the physician's medical decisions, hospitals need to improve the funding, staffing, and organization of their ethics committees. By doing so, these committees can resolve disputes more effectively before they result in costly legal battles.

Healthcare professionals encounter ethical decisions every day in the deliverance of healthcare for individuals with diverse values living in a culturally disparate and pluralistic society. Bioethics and professionalism are some of the few indispensable pillars of quality medical care. It establishes the foundation of how healthcare providers should treat their patients; building a trusting relationship and putting the patients’ needs first. The four main bioethical principles include respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice1. The principle of respect for autonomy is based on the ability of personal rule and freedom. Automony in the medical field refers to the ability of the patient to act intentionally, with understand, and without external restrictions that would diminish any free and voluntary act2. The notion of nonmaleficence can be summarized by the quote from Thomas Sydenham, “primum non nocere”: ‘above all, do no harm’3. Physicians are obligated to avoid doing any harm to their patients; this principle outweighs even the principle of respect for the patient’s autonomy in an incident where potential harm can occur1. The dogma of beneficence is the physician’s duty to strive to provide benefits to the patient as well as taking action to prevent or remove harm from the patient1, 5. One of the most common ethical quandaries in medicine revolves around the balance of nonmaleficience and beneficence; basically, the potential benefits of any

The correlation of increased potential patient rights violations and sensitive personal health data among electronic medical records than paper records is growing at an alarming rate. An estimated 52,000 public comments was reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring privacy regulations governing individually identifiable health information since the passage of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1966 (HIPPA). The individually identifiable health information includes demographic data that relates to the individuals past, present, or future physical or mental health condition. In addition, the provision of health care rights of the individual, confidentiality, protection of

Ethical Codes are in use today by many organizations to clearly establish their values and provide a procedure if a code violation occurs. Medical ethics began as a professional code for physicians and has now expanded and includes a variety of health care professions and health care organizations. The growth of medical knowledge and technology have grown so have the concerns that ethical standards and issues facing our society today may be compromised or not appropriately addressed (Littleton et al., 2010).

The ethics of care may be a normative moral theory: a theory concerning what makes actions virtuously right or wrong. It's one amongst a cluster of normative moral theories that were developed by feminists within the half of the 20th century. Whereas consequentialist and deontological moral theories emphasize universal standards and non-partisanship, ethics of care emphasize the importance of response. Ethics of care contrasts with additional well-known moral views, like consequentialist theories and deontological theories. This kind of outlook is what feminist critics decision a justice view of morality. A morality is a care that rests on the understanding of relationships as a response to a different in their terms.