Ethical Principle and Law
Jackson, (2016) states that providers are held to and guided by ethical principles and laws when it comes to their relationships with patients. The provider patient relationship must be one that is firmly based on mutual respect, confidentiality, honesty, responsibility, accountability, and, respect all laws. . In addition the provider must be committed to continuous improvement and excellence in the provision of health care and exercise good judgement and communicate sound clinical advice to their patients. Providers must also not lose sight of listening to their patients and treating them with the dignity they deserve. Above all the provider is profeesional and is expected to act accordingly by not engaging
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It’s not easy but it’s necessary because when mistakes happen, the patient can sue the practitioners and the institution for negligence or failure to disclose information related given the medical outcome. Honesty is highly appreciated when dealing with patients, more so in critical states because it costs nothing telling a patient the truth about their medical status.
Legal Principles and Law
Miola, (2017) expressed that the law is very tight when it comes to healthcare providers when they make decisions that result in injuries in healthcare. Violation of healthcare standards and lack of informed consent are important laws in the medical field because they dictate the quality of care that a patient is entitled. Before a physician delivers any form of care, it’s imperative that a patient gets subjected to informed consent. The same applies to whether the patient is in an emergency condition or merely sick.
Legal
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The patient deserves truth at all time, let alone informed consent. Ethically reasoning, the medical practitioner deserves to accord the patient information and treat them with uttermost care.
Recommendations
Medical practitioners and the healthcare facility are required to create an environment where nurses and other healthcare practitioners can speak to patients in an open an honest fashion. The government at both levels should encourage better ethics training and communication skills training for all members of the healthcare team to foster better communication with their patients at every level of care. The healthcare facility has to ensure that their ethics framework complies with state and federal statutes with special attention placed on informed consents for the patient.
It is important that people are in control of what happens to them while under the care of their doctor, especially if they're alert and aware. A provider cannot force treatment; if a patient is unconscious, the situation changes because competency and informed consent are not present.
... event arises and it was due to lack of assessment of genuine comprehension. I think the best system of obtain consent would incorporate a regulated system that accommodated each institution and their requirements, but also equally weighed the importance of true understanding of facts and realization of the patient’s capacity to make decisions. But even if this was established as standard practice, there would still be the issue of how the assessment is made and how accurate it is due to other influences i.e. current injury status or medications needed for full psychological and or conceptual functioning. There could also be an issue of how to regulate such a subjective issue; each physician is going to have different ethical views and this will inevitably influence how he/she assess the patient and their ability to make the best decisions concerning their health.
Ethical principals are extremely important to understand in the healthcare field. Ethical responsibilities in any situation depend on the role of the healthcare worker and the nature of the decision being made. Healthcare administrators and professionals must make ethical decisions that can be an everyday or controversial situation. When making such decisions, it is imperative to consider the four major principles of ethics: autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and distributive. By using these four principles, ethical decisions can effectively be made. For the purpose of this paper, examined will be the example of the treatment of an uninsured homeless patient. Poor health care be a cause and a result of homelessness.
The word ethics is derived from the Greek word ‘ethos’ meaning character or conduct. It is typically used interchangeably with word moral which is derived from the Latin word ‘moves’ which means customs or habits. Ethics refers to conduct, character and motivations involved in moral acts. Ethics are not imposed by a profession, by law but by moral obligation. It is unwritten code of conduct that encompasses both professional conduct and judgement. Ethics helps support autonomy and self-determination, protect the vulnerable and promotes the welfare and equality of human beings. An ethical dentist- patient relationship is based on trust, honesty, confidentiality, privacy and the quality of care.1
Ethical principles in healthcare are significant to the building blocks of mortality. The principles are beneficence, autonomy, justice, and nonmaleficence. Although these principles can be certainly followed they can also be disregarded. Beneficence is a theory that assures each procedure given is entirely beneficial to that patient to help them advance within their own good. For example, There was a young girl, the age of 17. She had been being treated at a small private practice since she was born. She was recently diagnosed with lymphoma and was only given a few more years to live. Her doctors at the private practice who had been seeing her for years were very attached to her and wanted to grant this dying girl her every wish. They promised
Providing the steps to ethically sound excellent care, healthcare providers must acknowledge first the legal and ethical matters involved with proper investigation and then devise a plan for best possible action recognizing the rights of the patient and its benefits followed by the application of the chosen intervention with positive outcome in mind (Wells, 2007). Delivery of excellent and quality of care at a constant level (NMC, 2008) must be marked in any responsibilities and duties of the care provider to promote exceptional nursing practice. Codes of nursing ethics and legal legislation have addressed almost all the necessary actions in making decisions in consideration to the best interest of the patient. Nurses must make sure that they are all guided by the set standard to lead their action and produce desirable and ethically sound outcomes.
Queensland Health (2011) states that in the nursing profession, certain principles must be fulfilled in order for informed consent to be considered valid. They state that the patient must be deemed to have the capacity to make a decision about the proposed issue at that specific time, and not be under the influence of any alcohol or drugs. They state that the patient must consent voluntarily and the decision be made free of manipulation or undue influence by family or the nurse. They suggest that the discussion must involve two-way communication between the patient and the nurse and be clear, rational and sensitive to the situation. The nurse must provide the patient with sufficient information about the proposed issue in a language that the patient can clearly comprehend (Queensland Health, 2011). When providing care, both nurses and paramedics must ensure that the patient has adequate knowledge and have a necessary understanding of the procedure, to...
An ethical dilemma is defined as a mental state when the nurse has to make a choice between the options and choices that he or she has at her disposal. The choice is a crucial task as the opting of the step will subsequently determine the health status of the concerned patient, hence it requires a great deal of wisdom along with proper medical and health training before any such step is opted as it is a matter of life and death. Strong emphasis should therefore be on the acquisition of proper knowledge and skills so that nurses do posses the autonomy to interact with patients regarding ethical issues involved in health care affairs and address them efficiently. It is normally argued that nurses are not provided sufficient authority to consult and address their patients on a more communicative or interactive level as a result of which they are often trapped in predicaments where their treatments of action and their personal beliefs create a conflict with the health interests of the patient. (Timby, 2008)
Truth-telling in nursing and the medical profession in general is an extensive area encompassing many ethical issues, not limited to and including the rights of patients or their families to receive information about their diagnosis and illness. The practitioner, on the other hand, must balance their obligation to tell the truth against the importance of Non-maleficence ,“do no harm”.
The most common areas of clinical practice where truth-telling and deception become an ethical dilemma are critical care, cancer and palliative care, mental health and general nursing practice (Tuckett, 2004). Other areas where it can raise potential ethical concerns are in placebo therapy, disclosure of human immunodeficiency virus and informed consent (Tuckett, 2004). Truth-telling is also an act of exchanging moral agents (patients, relatives, nurses) with their sets of values and norms, which in turn are derived from culture, personal and religious beliefs, and traditions (Dossa, 2010). For this reason, the issue of truth-telling is not only approached differently in the various clinical settings but also in different countries, cultures and religions (Kazdaglis et al., 2010). For example, in the United States of America (USA), England, Canada and Finland, the majority of patients are told of their diagnosis (Kazdaglis et al., 2010). Conversely, in Japan, family members play a major role in the decision of ...
The writer discusses a situation of the doctor failing to disclose the nature of important medical condition which can jeopardize several of the patient’s family members and puts the doctor at odds with them. The problem is also discussed by Sutrop (2011) who show how protecting the patient’s confidentiality and self- decision capacity has actually caused severe hindrances to the field of scientific development and research.
The ethical angle of consent comes from patient autonomy and also involves basic human rights, in this aspect patients have all the rights and freedom to choose the path of treatment and the ability to decide what happens to his/her body and to acquire information on procedure they are about to undergo. No one else can decide the path of treatment for the patient even the doctor only acts as a facilitator of the decision of the patient.(Satyanarayana Rao, 2008) Legal aspects of communication require an in-depth discussion of treatment options between doctor and patients, the patients are informed about the risks of the procedures. The patients are then presented with proper medical documentation noting their consent. Rates of malpractice claims can be reduced by acquiring informed consent in the office areas rather than the preoperative area.(Bhattacharyya, Yeon, & Harris, 2005) Requirements of Informed Consent 1. Investigator must obtain the consent or people assigned by the investigator, it must be a competent adult with sound mind.
Health care service delivery is a commercial job, and the financial management helps with adjusting the inflows and surges that are a portion of the industry. The administrators inside of a health care organization will by and large have one of three perspectives, the financial perspective, the process view, and the clinical perspective. In financial view, the directors by and large work with funds every day. The reporting capacity is a piece of their obligations. By planning they often perform a great part of the vital work for the association.
When disclosing information to any patient, there is always a contract in place that helps describe what both parties have agreed to and also the rights and responsibilities of both alike. There is a standard in place with disclosing information in the healthcare system. It is based on the principal that the healthcare provider needs to give information that a “reasonable person” would need to make an informed decision on
The American Medical Association (AMA) developed a Code of Medical Ethics which includes: the patient has a right to obtain and discuss health information related to benefits, risks, and costs of treatment alternatives; patient’s can make decisions pertaining to healthcare suggested by the physician; the patient has the right to courtesy, respect, dignity, and attention to healthcare needs in a timely manner; and the patient has a right to confidentially, continuity, and adequate health care. (emedicinehealth, 2011). Communicating openly and honestly between the patient and doctor will allow both parties to make decisions to properly take care of needs.