Personal Ethical Dilemmas

Ethics in the workplace are becoming hot topics. Ethic is becoming a part of our curriculums, business meetings, and departments. I believe that each individual deals with ethical issues on a daily basis. As managers or leaders in our workplace, we have to ensure that we are acting ethically as well as ensure our employees are conducting themselves ethically and morally.

I work in healthcare where every day we faced ethical conflicts. As practitioners, we took an oath that our obligation is to do no harm. We are in charge of taking care of people. We are obligated ethically to help people.

We help individual with pain management or recommending treatments to prolong their lives. These two examples can pose very controversial ethical issues.

There are a person who by knowing that death is near start to experience major emotional distress which can lead to anxiety, stress and even suicide.

In health care, it is also essential that all practitioners know the difference between medical and personal ethics. When faced with emergency decisions our personal ethics and medical ethics can be confused. This can lead to the wrong decisions for the patients. In non-emergencies, it also can be difficult to understand the difference of medical and personal ethics. There are times when practitioners have to know that they will be unable to abide by their patient's wishes. We must clarify, and disclose to our patients that they will no longer be able to care for them.

In healthcare, we are beginning to see many changes. Ethics has become a major component of the puzzle. At my organization, we have hired a team of ethical specialist who are on call 24hrs to answer difficult questions or to help mentor our staff on how to communicate with our patients or

What I have learned is to lead by example. When I discover issues, I have to investigate them. Once I know the logistics of it, I have to have a conversation with my employee. If the issue is unethical, I have to follow up with human resources and we look through our policies and then have to go through a Corrective Action Plan with the employee. This includes a discipline that starts with giving them a verbal, written, final written and followed by terminations. However, in most cases the unethical decisions where their best possible choice at the time. Each case is different of course. However, if an unethical decision was purposeful the employees are terminated