Presentation Rough Draft

Ethical Code

The current era has had integrated healthcare has evolved into a mature healthcare model that has quickly become the standard of care. The social workers have now become engaged in a wide range of comprehensive healthcare organizations to help counter the increasingly complex and growing ethical challenges. Social workers often have dilemmas handling high-stakes problems with massive consequences (Reamer, 2018). The possibility of these high consequences necessitates a professional code of ethics to provide a decision-making model. Even though the social workers need to act on their judgment and instincts, they should act by the professional code of conduct.

Ethical dilemmas pose a great concern in matters that bring two potentially conflicting justifiable solutions in conflict. A good example has an older person who wants to live freely and independently, but her conditions make it difficult for them to do so. In such a situation, the dilemma comes from deciding which action would best solve the situation, the client's need for assisted living, and the client's right to self-determination. The answer is unclear because either option would satisfy all the ethical concerns (Reamer, 2018). This scenario shows how the social world dilemmas is often a high-stake issue with detrimental irreversible consequence. Thanks to the code of ethos, it offers guidelines and decision-making that would complement their judgment.

The health information management professionals include protecting the security and privacy of health information, the expansion, application, and maintenance of health information systems, and the appropriate disclosure of health information. The key responsibility of professionals is to stick to the ethical obligations regardless of the situation of collections storage and use of health information. According to the American Health Information management association, health practitioners must conduct their practice following the core values that advocate upholds and defends the patients' rights (Reamer, 2018). The violations of the code of ethics do not automatically violate or imply legal liability. The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) code of ethics provides comprehensive ethical and unethical behaviors guidelines.

In this case, we need to understand the definition of dilemma. It is important to understand that dilemma is a complex phenomenon with no definitive rule to determine the process for a specific situation. There are there main situations that constitute an ethical dilemma. The first is that the dilemma comprises a complex web of morals, behaviors, and morals that social workers must manage within a regulatory and legal sphere. Secondly, ethical dilemmas have different ways to be solved, and lastly, none of the dilemmas is the best choice (Montreuil et al., 2019). A good example of ethical dilemmas is when social workers face the question of breaking their client's confidentiality or even when a social worker encounters a conflicting situation where personal and professional values conflict with serving the client.

It is important to note that helping people in social work and health science is based on evidence-based discipline with standards and regulations for people with dilemmas. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) offers a decision-making model that guides all social workers. It enables thee to follow the stipulated standards, maintain discipline, and avoid violations. The main mantra that should guise the social workers is to follow the ethical guidelines, and everything else will fall back. It is easier to memorize the ethical dilemmas but applying them can be tough. But through continuous training programs for the social workers, it is easy to follow through the procedure and ensure the accomplishment of the right task.

In America, healthcare delivery is growing rapidly to keep up with the ever-growing management of chronic diseases and the population's health needs. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed in 2009 has enabled the high saturation of health documents meant to document health delivery and guide the healthcare delivery clinical decision making. One strength of this act is that it supports patient safety and quality in the context of ethical and professional codes of conduct. This policy helps apply frameworks and ethical issues to analyze the situation's clinical scenarios to solve the daily problems experienced in clinical care.

Case Studies

One good scenario is of a nurse working in busy community hospital emergency departments. The patients have a heart rate of 110, respiratory rate of 30, oxygen saturation of 88%, and asepsis suspected due to possible pneumonia. The symptoms trigger EHR (Electronic Health Record) because the patient scores high CDS in that inbuilt in the EHR (McBride et al., 2018). This process would necessarily prompt the physician to conduct fluid resuscitation on the patients (Alkabba et al., 2018). But then, the nurse realized that the EHR indicates that the patient had evolving sepsis and was previously admitted for overload from heart failure. So, this realization raises her suspicion that the patient does not have sepsis and may be suffering from possible pulmonary edema and exacerbation of heart failure because the patient exhibited crackles in both lungs and 2+ pitting edema.

The Nurse questions the doctor about the patient's condition and relays her concern that the patient is not sepsis, as she notes from the history of heart failure in the records. Heart failure increases the risk for fluid overload with bolus. The doctor agrees with the nurse this fact but instructs the nurse to drip in slow to comply with sepsis quality metrics for the hospital (McBride et al., 2018). The doctor's main concern here was sending the patient to the ICU, and then it would later be evident that they did not follow the protocol in handling the case (Alkabba et al., 2018). The physician and the nurse did not follow the order for slow drip. The patient required direct admission to ICU, but that did not happen due to verbal instruction by the doctor on a buy shift in the emergency department. The ethical question here arises on the appropriateness of the physician's orders. Still, the nurse follows the instructions anyways, which makes her more distressed because she wishes to give the patient the best outcome.

Another case study is of George, who is a twenty-three-year-old with Down syndrome. George had found a part-time job at a nearby restaurant as a dishwasher and lived with his parents. His parents decided to take him to a live-in group home to give him a good experience where he would get friends and interact with them regularly. He made friends with Stan at the developmentally disabled home, and his parent was happy that he had a found a friend (Flanigan, 2017). However, one Saturday, as both stand and George were waiting for a bus, the stand accidentally pushed George, who fell in front of a bus and suffered a brain injury.

This injury resulted in Georg being fed using a feeding tube for a long time without any consciousness. Those situations force the doctor to request a do not resuscitate order for George signed by the parents (Flanigan, 2017). The parents started to consult the doctor about removing the feeding tube and letting George die. Although letting him die would not improve his quality of life, it would be better. This poses an ethical question to the doctor on whether to continue.

Another case is that of Dr. Benson, full-time telemedicine working from home, consultation through a secure video link embedded in telehealth. Dr, Benson had a 29 year client Ms. Jones was using the telemedicine service for the first time (Snyder & Mueller, 2017). The patient said she experienced vaginal discharge, few days of dysuria, and some burning and itching. However, the patient is more reluctant to reveal her sexual history despite being sexually active (Snyder & Mueller, 2017). The doctor proposes to her to have a physical examination because this condition needs more in-depth examination. Still, the patient suggests that the doctor just give her prescription without a physical examination. In this case, the doctor is faced with the dilemma of misdiagnosing the patient and giving a wrong prescription or insisting on in-person evaluation. The patient ends up handing the phone because that service did not yield to prescription.

The Policies, Laws, And Ethical Guidelines That Influenced Decision Making In Human Services Case Studies

The healthcare service lies in the human service profession as it offers a critical response to the human problems and direction of human needs. The key characteristic of human service is to appreciate human diversities and offer critical service to the communities. The fundamental (Montreuil et al., 2019). The healthcare profession recognizes and builds the community strength and helps establish a formal way to protect patient privacy and confidentiality. Such confidentiality will create serious harm to life or individuals if they are not handled correctly.

Besides ethical justice, it is also critical to note that ethics is an essential aspect of healthcare and social work delivery. These two approaches are essentially blended to solve the modern challenges of the new public management on the public service (Kelly, 2018). As mentioned above, it is critical that the electronic health record, brought by modern technology, offers the physicians, patients, and clinical team a great benefit (McBride et al., 2018). However, the use of EHR. The modern era, where more processes are delivered online, needs more assessment of the EHR impacts the patient-physician relationship, patient care, and navigating the obstacle of providing care in this digital age.

Conlcusion

In brief, the health law is utterly a complex and rapidly changing phenomenon that professionals require the most current and practical information to achieve legal compliance in the professional context. It is much common to encounter issues concerning professional boundaries (Boyle, 2019). More importantly, the ethical standard has evolved due to the increased integration in the healthcare setting and increased collaboration with professionals who follow different codes of ethics. In some instances, the ethical standard may be different compared with the related professionals regarding ethical issues such as privacy, consent, dual relationships, boundaries, and confidentiality (Boyle, 2019). Irrespective of what fields you work in in healthcare, the professionals must always navigate the question of the ethically correct chives that they encounter. The healthcare sector is a field that requires high ethical standards that incorporate moral decision-making into medical policies and practices. Therefore healthcare professionals must follow ethical principles to ensure they deliver good services to the patients.

References

Alkabba, A. F., Hussein, G. M., Albar, A. A., Bahnassy, A. A., & Qadi, M. (2018). The major medical ethical challenges facing the public and healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia. Journal of Family and Community Medicine, 19(1), 1.

Boyle, M. (2019). 6 Ethical Issues in Healthcare in 2020 | AHU Online. AHU Online. Retrieved 20 August 2021, from https://online.ahu.edu/blog/ethical-issues-in-healthcare/.

Flanigan, R. (2017). Case Study - DNR for an Adult with Down syndrome. Practicalbioethics.org. Retrieved 22 August 2021, from https://www.practicalbioethics.org/case-studies-dnr-for-adult-with-down-syndrome.html.

Kelly, W. (2018). Floridatechonline.com. Retrieved 20 August 2021, from https://www.floridatechonline.com/blog/healthcare-management/current-ethical-issues-in-healthcare/.

McBride, S., Tietze, M., Robichaux, C., Stokes, L., & Weber, E. (2018). Identifying and addressing ethical issues with the use of electronic health records. Online J Issues Nurs, 23(1).

Montreuil, M., Martineau, J. T., & Racine, E. (2019). Exploring ethical issues related to patient engagement in healthcare: Patient, clinician and researcher's perspectives. Journal of bioethical inquiry, 16(2), 237-248.

Reamer, F. G. (2018). Ethical issues in integrated health care: Implications for social workers. Health & social work, 43(2), 118-124.

Snyder Sulmasy, L., & Mueller, P. S. (2017). Ethics and the legalization of physician-assisted suicide: an American College of Physicians position paper. Annals of internal medicine, 167(8), 576-578.