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Legal and Ethical Issues Essay

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Assignment 1 2 Health care professionals must learn how to balance the principles of Nonmaleficence, Beneficence, Autonomy, and Justice especially in a busy hospital as in the case of Armando Dimas. Health care ethics is a type of normative, applied ethics. It is based on the assumption that, despite all of our differences, we can determine what is right and wrong within the constraints of a human condition prone to error. The goal of health care ethics is to provide health care professionals, students who seek health care careers, and members of the general public with moral guidelines that any rational …show more content…

It was a surprise to the staff when they were able to speak with Armando, they found that he actually wanted all measures possible to save his life even though he would be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. Doing this, he was asserting his autonomy and not taking the disregard of beneficence and nonmalefience from the staff. Mr. Dimas stayed in the hospital and was given all possible services that the hospital could provide for him. Problems came about which are related to justice. In our country, it is not right to treat one patient different than another patient when the circumstances are similar. One must think about the effort, need, ability to pay, resources and merit to provide fair treatment to everyone. In this situation, Armando had no insurance and became a financial burden to the hospital. The hospital however, did do everything they could to help Armando and even helped him get a custom wheel chair thus keeping their principles of justice. As time went on, even though the hospital did what they could, their ethical standards became too much for them. They had to compare what it was costing for just one patient compared to how many they would have to turn away if they continued to absorb the costs for Armando’s care. The hospital made the decision to transfer him to a cheaper facility that could care for him. Armando actually liked the new facility, Barts, and the care that

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