Ethics In Physical Therapy

This means that confidential information must remain between the patient and PT. Second principle is physical therapists shall be trustworthy and compassionate in addressing the right and needs of patients/clients. This brings back the core value of Altruism and how the PT needs to care deeply about the client. Principle three says how Physical therapists shall be accountable for making sound professional judgments. This means that PT needs to always be making the right choice and how to approach rehabilitation for different patients.

One important role massage therapist has, is to make the client feel comfortable. The more experience you have within this field, the more confident the therapist would be during a massage session. The idea of the client feeling safe, emotional and/or psychologically, is the a way to receive an effective session (Porcino,2014). The more the client feels complacent, the more the client will be willing to return. Also if the client feels safe, the number of lawsuits would decrease.The American Massage Therapy Association’s Rules of Ethics(2) states that practitioners shall be truthful in advertising and marketing, and refrain from misrepresenting his or her services, charges for services, credentials, training, experience, ability or results

Physical therapists are bound by a set of code of ethics determined by the House of Delegates of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). It’s a set of 8 principles holding the purpose of providing good behavior and performance as well as guidance for physical therapists in facing ethical challenges.

The concern for morality and ethics cuts across all endeavors of human existence. Focusing particularly on the helping professions – Pastoral care, Counseling, medicine, Psychiatry, Social Work, Law, and Teaching - the need for standard professional guidelines for conduct of practitioners becomes of paramount importance. Competence or knowledge of techniques of therapy is important; but A person who needs to be salvaged, who needs spiritual, psychological, emotional, psychiatric healing or direction would rather prefer to interact with an ethically seasoned” half trained

Physical therapy is defined as the treatment of an injury, disease, or deformity by physical means and methods such as exercise, hot or cold treatments, and/or massage rather than a pharmaceutical method such as opioids or the surgical route. Physical therapy much like other healthcare professions is a patient based profession in which the healthcare professional and the patient are in contact with each other frequently. This contact between the professional (the physical therapist assistant in this case) and the patient can propose issues that could challenge the physical therapist assistant’s morals, ethics, and/or professionalism. These challenges made it apparent that there needed to be guidelines for the professionalism a physical therapist assistant must follow and be aware of, which led to the development of the 8 value-based behaviors.

Thus, there are several ethical principles that are intimately involved including beneficence, justice, fidelity and autonomy. Beneficence is a major ethical principle involved because it calls the therapist to stand up for the well-being and safety of the Residents, such that when the therapist recognizes possibly harmful conditions, such as excessive restraint use, she is obligated to work to prevent harm if possible and stand up for their Resident rights (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2015b). Similarly, the principle of Justice requires that the therapist should stand up for the appropriate treatment of others and uphold laws and regulations (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2015b). As there are directly applicable laws and regulations to this dilemma, this principle of ethics requires the therapist to be aware of the relevant laws regarding restraint use, report the potentially unethical and illegal acts, and work with her employer to develop legal and ethical policies and procedures (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2015b). Adding to this ethical principle, under the Ohio Revised Code 5101.61, the therapist also has the professional duty to report suspected elder abuse (Public Welfare Provisions, 2018).

Ethical Dilemma # 19 problem indicated issues with an occupational therapist located in a rural school district to provide services outside of their scope of practice. The occupational thera-pist is the only healthcare professional within this school district that provides services. The con-tribution from other healthcare professionals is limited, due to the inability to get professionals from other disciplines, in spite of numerous recruiting efforts and a current open position. The occupational therapist sees the area of concern for the client, but the parent and teacher want the child to walk. Teaching the client how to walk is not in the scope of practice unless it’s functional mobility to engage in an activity or occupation. This situation identifies as an ethical dilemma be-cause it causes conflicts in professional interactions, client interventions, and employment setting.

In the healthcare field there are many institutions that specialize in different methods of treatment such as a nursing assistant, dentist, pathologist, psychiatrist and physical therapists to name a few. With these different jobs and countless employees in the medical profession, there are plenty of patients to be cared for because everyone needs medical attention no matter if it is a broken arm or getting a tooth pulled, health care is a necessity.

In the past century, chiropractors were shunned and undermined as unethical medical doctors with the sole belief that it was unethical to associate with any of these kind of practitioners. The article which I have thoroughly analysed was retrieved on the American Medical Association website. It outlines the history and events of the struggle of the chiropractors back in the early 1800s up until the late 1900’s. The article also explains how Chester Wilk along with four other chiropractors sued the AMA due to violations of section 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Through these significant events, the future of chiropractic has been created into what it is as of today.

Given the scenario about the diabetic patient, the obvious ethical situation in what the physical therapist did is essentially steal from the hospital. They gave away inventory without billing the patient, thus shortchanging the hospital financially. Also, another important ethical dilemma is that special treatment was given to one patient that is not given to all. Both of these ethical shortcomings, left unattended, would ultimately lead to employees doing as they wanted and at their own discretion. This could result in detrimental impacts to the hospital's logistics, and even more serious, inconsistent patient treatments. In any professional environment this should not be tolerated, especially in the medical field. To fix this issue, I would take two major steps; the first dealing with the patient and the next dealing with the physical therapist.

Physician owned physical therapy services (POPTS) are organizations in which a physician can financially gain from referring physical therapy services to an institution in which they have ownership or some sort of financial stake in the company of referral. This is commonly known as referral for profit.1 An example of POPTS is an orthopedic surgeon owning his/her practice that employs physical therapists to which he/she only refers their patients. This type of referral not only gives unfair advantage to the physician owner; it more importantly takes away from the patient’s choice of provider. This issue has been a source of controversy for some time. The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) has been in opposition to POPTS since the late 1970s. This opposition did not gain traction until the Stark legislation in the 1990s; which

According to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online, ethics is a system of accepted beliefs that control behavior, especially such a system based on morals ("Cambridge," n.d.). Ethics in health care is aimed at providing guidelines and codes for health care providers for their duty, responsibility, and conduct (Mohanti, 2009). Major ethical issues arise at the end-of-life, this can include aspects in pharmacology, barriers to effective pain management, drug diversion, and the role of the nurse in pain and symptom management. With the many issues surrounding end-of-life, there are also available resources out there to help.

Clinicians worldwide strive to practice valuable morals for patients in healthcare. One-way clinicians have succeeded in ethical values is by applying Principalism in their work ethics. Ethical principles are general obligations that guide our actions, “principles help bridge the gap between moral rules and the complex realities of human life” (p. 5). The ethical theory I chose in chapter one is Principalism. The three most important features associated with Principalism is autonomy, nonmaleficence, and justice.

For over 75 years the profession of physical therapy has required it's members to adhere to a standard of ethical behavior.1 The first Code of Ethics adopted by the American Physiotherapy Association in 1935 focused mainly on the relationship between the physical therapist (PT), referring physician, and the disciplinary actions of violating that relationship.2(p.4) Since then the Code of Ethics has evolved into what the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) refers to as the Code of Ethics for the Physical Therapist (PT Code), and the Standards of Ethical Conduct for the Physical Therapist Assistant (PTA Standards).2(p.5),3,4 Today the Code and Standards are designed around the association's core set of values to

Healthcare professionals can be deal with wide range of ethical and regulatory concerns in their day to day clinical practices. Richardson (2015), point out that sometimes fiscally driven new rules, regulation and limited benefits may prevent utmost patient care and best practice standards of physical therapists. Thus, American Physical therapy association (APTA) profession conduct provides guidance for all physical therapist and students. Moreover, code of ethics by APTA, set forth principles for physical therapy ethical practice, which conclusively mentioned that physical therapist act in the best interest of patient/client (Kirsch, 2008). According to Kirsch, Realm individual process model (RIPS) is effective in ethical decision making process by providing knowledge about ethical behavior or situation and individual process (2006). RIPS ethical decision making process help especially to physical