Healthcare Ethics Case Study

Every patient has the right to refuse treatment if they are competent. In the case study the 35-year old woman’s religion and chronic disease was the determining factor of her not wanting to receive a blood transfusion. If the treating physician would try to influence her decision away from her family and offer a secret transfusion that would be unethical. According to the textbook ethical decision making was derived from natural law. It is thought that healthcare ethics interprets God’s will to determine how we can make for fellow human beings. All clinical scenarios are based on ethical principles which travel back to Ancient Greece writings by Aristotle’s for the foundation of ethics. Each profession has a code of ethics for standards for

All of these principles are in the American College of Healthcare Administrators. A competent patient has autonomy and it is exercising the right to make their own healthcare decisions. An incompetent patients and children must have all healthcare decisions made by a legal guardian or the courts. The next ethical principle is beneficence personal taking care of a patient must do right by them and not harm the patient. This is where cultural values play a factor on how the patient is treated. This ethical principle ties in with Fidelity which is to faithful discharge of one’s duty toward the patient’s care. Lastly there is the ethical issue of Justice which is the legal and ethical responsibility to care for all people without discrimination on various basis of race, creed, and other

The patients’ religious preference places expectations on the healthcare system for receiving extraordinary care for terminally ill patients. The Jewish religion view on death is that defined by the rabbis as “one who is within three days of death”. The patient cannot do anything to shorter their life nor do anything to relieve their suffering. The Jewish reglion has a term called terminal dehydration which is the withholding of food and fluids to allow the patient to die. There is a dilemma in this concept because it has a limited time frame of three days. As well the Jewish law gives the commandment to live everyday to the fullest by eating and drinking fluids naturally or