Medical Ethics

The patient was already living with one of her daughters who is a nurse, John’s elder sister, and continued to be cared for by her daughter. However, a few months later in late May, the patient suffered a second stroke, which rendered the remaining two functioning limbs paralyzed. In addition, “she lost the ability to eat, talk, or drink. She could not move her head either, and she could not swallow anything,” John stated, “My mom was so sick. We didn’t even know if she could recognize anyone or not. She could open her eyes, but she had lost a lot of vision even before the strokes. It looked like she could make some small expressions on her face, but we could not really tell. Most of the time she kept her eyes closed. She could maybe hear us, because when my siblings called out to her that I had returned home, we saw her open her eyes and kind of look at me. She looked at me and had some facial expression.” John continued, “We tried to feed her water and liquidized foods, but because she could not swallow or move her mouth, we had to force it down, and she coughed often when we tried this. We thought maybe the force-feeding was causing some of the food to go into her respiratory tract, which was bad. We felt very, very helpless.”

Blackman’s complaints, signs, and symptoms were downplayed and eventually he was transferred out of the PACU with no further plan of care, assessment of the issues, or action to alleviate his complaints. 3 days postoperative, with continued scheduled Ketorolac administration, Lewis’ pain was unfathomable. Despite repeated attempts to gain the attention of the healthcare team to Blackman’s impending crisis, his pain was once again downplayed. The nurses again failed to recognize the significance of his increasing abdominal pain and deterioration, chalking it up to gas pain, suggesting only movement and a bath as the acceptable plan of care. Lewis’ symptoms continued to progress and he deteriorated to a state of clinical shock evidenced by abnormally low temperature and increased heart rate and respiratory rate accompanied by extreme paleness, enlarged abdomen, with absent bowel sounds. Inexperience, lack of recognition, and failure to rescue eventually led to the unexpected death of Lewis Blackman (Acquaviva, et al., 2013).

On the contrary, T’s Father and brother did not approve this. They decided to take the case to court. The judge identified that T’s mother pressurised her in making the decision not to receive the blood transfusion.

In the 25th week of her pregnancy, the mother was advised by the nurse to remain on bed rest to avoid further complications and potentially hurting her unborn baby. The mother continued to work from the hospital placing additional stress on the baby despite the nurse’s appeal that such stress can cause the baby harm. Attempts to stop premature delivery were made but failed, the mother asked the medical team not to take any extraordinary measure to save the baby. The premature baby lived but the mother showed little interest in his health and wellness. The nurse tried to the best of her ability to spark

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

Likewise, it also provides for a better patient experience when the patient is involved in the decision making of health care choices and the health care professionals, both, nurses and physicians listen to their patients and families and address concerns that arise. At the end of the day, this will reduce costs, unnecessary procedures, diagnostics, extended acute care stays and needless medical errors. In the case of Lewis Blackman, the Triple Aim would have been addressed if the team had involved the patient and mother in the plan of care. She spoke about the nurses not listening to her concerns. Had they listened to the mother’s concerns, the amount of hours before something was done to address the concerns and recognizing that the patient’s condition was rapidly changing would of resulted in a much different outcome.

In today’s health care industry, mechanical restraints are often used to maintain patients’ behavior and ensure their safety when treating the elderly and the severely ill (Gatsmans & Milisen, 2006). There are many variations of mechanical restraints, but all are defined as “any device, material or equipment attached to or near a person 's body and which cannot be controlled or easily removed by the person and which deliberately prevents or is deliberately intended to prevent a person 's free body movement to a position of choice and/or a person 's normal access to their body” (Gatsmans & Milisen, 2006, p.

This certainly could have played a significant role in Lewis Blackmans outcome. One of the focus points Helen Haskell recalled was the lack of clinical expertise that the “young nurses” exhibited by continually failing to recognize the fluid deficit of her son.

“I hate Marietta, I hate Marietta,” my new patient chanted. To his credit, he had retreated to his upstairs bedroom and was speaking quietly, no doubt thinking I couldn’t hear him. He was clearly upset when I arrived earlier that morning, but I was not aware of anything I had done to cause this. David* was generally energetic and happy, but could turn sullen and bossy very quickly. He was also resistant to the most basic aspects of his care, such as toileting, and had a very difficult time transitioning from fun activities to his g-tube feedings. My relationship with him would prove to be both the most difficult and the most rewarding part of the job.

The four principles of medical ethics include nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice. These principles were created by Beauchamp and James Childress because they felt these four were the building blocks of people’s morality. Nonmaleficence is to do no harm to others. Beneficence is to care or help others. Autonomy is to respect another’s wishes. These four principles relate to issues surrounding physician-assisted death in many ways. To begin, there are seven individual forms of PAD. They are the following; voluntary passive euthanasia, nonvoluntary passive euthanasia, involuntary passive euthanasia, voluntary active euthanasia, nonvoluntary active euthanasia, involuntary active euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. Passive euthanasia is an act in which the health care physician withholds treatment or surgery and the result is the patient’s death. An example of passive euthanasia is a cancer patient refusing treatment and the physician agrees with their decision, therefore the patient dies from the lack of intervention to treat their illness. Active euthanasia is an act in which the health care physician has a direct contact with the patient’s death due to the physician’s act of doing something to the patient in order for them to die. An example of active euthanasia is an injection of potassium chloride. Voluntary is when the patient is requesting assistance to die. Nonvoluntary is when the patient is not requesting assistance and their wishes are unknown

The Medical ethicist has been an issue in public policy and needs attention. The concept of relationship between individuals’ health and the government policy is a challenge; for a long time, the healthcare policy in this area was not helpful. The Public policy still short in helping eliminates the disparity among services to the elderly, disabled or less fortunate. Health care disparities have been prevalent among the general population; with access to necessitous preventative and mental health care services being narrowly available. The issue was addressed disproportionately in the public health care sectors; resulting in clear differences. Now going forward, what will be the underlying assurances reform for the vulnerable populations?

Dr. Barnes and the patient’s obstetrician decided to stop treatment on a twenty- three week old, premature baby girl. The infant was in good hands of a neonatal nurse specialist, Mr. Simmons. He is accustomed to treating infants of her weight at 630 grams (1.4 pounds) and smaller. Simmons knew that the baby would need to be placed on respiratory support and transferred to the nearest tertiary care facility in order to survive. Dr. Barnes, a pediatric associate was on call for the evening. Dr. Barnes felt that the measures needed to make sure that the baby would survive were too aggressive for her condition. Dr. Barnes and the obstetrician called off the treatment before consulting with the new parents and having a chance to discuss a plan of action, letting the parents make the final decision.

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.

Professionals in every field are always confronted with some kind of ethical issues. It has however been noted that these ethical issues become high in magnitude and extent when public officials are involved. Due to the involvement of human life, an industry like healthcare holds ethics in highest regard. Even though these healthcare practitioners are highly trained to deal with issues of these kinds, their decisions can sometimes have a lasting impact on their professional and personal lives (Edwards 2009).

Medical ethics, and the adherence to ethical procedures, is of the utmost importance when working in the field of biological sciences. A scientist, especially those working with animal and human populations, must follow a strict ethical code, which, condensed, amounts to “do no harm” - but in effect is significantly more complex and nuanced due to the ever changing and evolving state of medical ethics and recent developments in pharmaceutical and genetic methods of treatment. Many novel treatments may cast into doubt what is considered ethical and unethical – new developments in stem cell therapy, genetic engineering, transplant surgery, and pharmaceutical testing all have their own moral “grey areas” in terms of what is considered unethical. Is the line blurred between ethical and unethical practice, and therefore practice and malpractice, when to do harm unto one could potentially save thousands, if not millions?