Senior Project Progress Report

Health care is a field that has raised numerous ethical concerns related to health care delivery, professional integrity, handling of patient data, use of human subjects in research, and the application of new treatment techniques like gene manipulation. Health care ethics is a set of moral values, principles, and beliefs that guide healthcare practitioners when making medical decisions and taking care of patients. The decisions made must be well researched and considerate before treatment as well as taking into consideration the beliefs and values of patients. (Doukas, McCullough, & Wear, 2012). The main point of focus of health care ethics is the sense of right and wrong and personal beliefs about rights possessed and the duties that each person owes another person. Therefore, health care ethical issue affect how medicine is practiced and how patients are treated.

The Scope of Health Care Ethics

Health care ethical responsibility in any given situation partly depends on the nature of the decision to be made and the roles that each involved party. In U.S, health care professionals are required to follow four main principles when dealing with patients: autonomy involves honoring a patient’s right to make their own decision; beneficence involves helping a patient enhance their own health; non-maleficence is to do no harm; and justice is to be fair and treat all similar cases alike without bias or discrimination. All of the four principles are equal and important. When healthcare practitioners interact with patients, they need to protect their medical information which is considered confidential or private. Confidentiality of medical records is one of the most important ethical issues that might arise in the healthcare field. Interfering with patient’s medical records can impact patient’s trust in their doctor. Healthcare providers must always seek the permission of their patients before releasing it to anyone.

The second issue is referral decision. This becomes an ethical issue when referrals are made for personal benefits. Some physicians have turned the referral of patients into a business opportunity forgetting that the welfare of a patient is the most important. The third ethical issue is dealing with elderly patients. Patients with advanced age have problems with making decisions on their own hence family members have to step in and help them make decision for instance ending their life. The Fourth ethical issue is the Patient Protection and Affordable Act. This is an issue that has brought about fixed payment of medical services leading to underpayment of healthcare providers or overpayment. The last issue that affects and challenges decision-making in healthcare centers is allocation of limited medications and donor organs.

Discussion

The protection of private and confidential patient information in the medical field is one of the most critical ethical issues that healthcare providers and administrators face. Whatever a patient discusses with their doctor should always remain private and confidential unless the patient consents. The hospital administration should always make sure that access to such information is limited and controlled. Federal and state laws have been put in place to protect such information and any one illegally and unauthorized to access such information can be sued. Currently, the use of electronic health records (EHR) which has improved quality of healthcare has made access of private information easy because there are people who can hack into computers and retrieve private information (Ozair, et al., 2015). The Hospital administrators must always make sure that only limited people have passwords to computers with confidential information and to secure internal network from hackers.

Referral of patients is also resulting to emergence of unethical conduct by some healthcare providers who have desire to make personal profit. Medical referral involves guiding a patient to an expert who would be in a position to handle better a patient’s medical condition and to analyze and supervise the patient (Anyawu, Abedi, & Onohwakpor, 2015). However, this is a service that has provided some healthcare providers with avenues for making extra cash. Healthcare center administrators should always make sure that such actions are not present because a healthcare provider may refer a patient to an expert that would not take care of the patient as required.

Dealing with elderly patients brings various ethical challenges. Such patients do have difficulty making their own decision forcing family members to make the decisions on their behalf. However, this is a task that is difficult especially if the patient is terminally ill and desires to end their life in order to prevent unnecessary suffering (Ludwick, & Silva, 2003). The hospital and the ethical committee should always check if the patient has a living will that may have the ending of life explained. This helps avoid unnecessary confusion and makes following proper ethical protocol easy (("Ethical Issues in Healthcare | MD-Health.com", 2016)).

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has created new conflict of interest among healthcare providers. The main goal of the act is to make healthcare coast affordable to all including low-income patients. If a patient’s treatment results to more cost than what the government has reimbursed to the hospital, the hospital stands to lose but if the treatment cost is low and reimbursement is high then the hospital gains. Additionally, this kind of payment easily opens door for unethical practices like choosing a cheaper treatment option that is not recommended for a patient so that the physician or hospital can make profit or gain. The last ethical issue is allocation of limited medications and donor organs. This is a possible future ethical issue which is likely to interfere with the very core of decision-making in healthcare centers.

Conclusion

Healthcare industry is faced with various ethical issues, challenges, and dilemmas on a daily basis. This is because at the center of it all is the patients’ wellbeing and mortality. The patient is always the center of focus and attention. The various ethical issues faced by healthcare professionals compel them to make decisions that might affect the health of a patient. Therefore, to avoid the various ethical issues, health care managers and administrator should always make sure that healthcare providers put the interests of the patients first and their second.

References

Anyawu, E.B., Abedi, H.O., & Onohwakpor, E.A. (2015). The Practice of Medical Referrals: Ethical Concerns. American Journal of Public Health Research 3(1): 31- 35

Doukas, D. J., McCullough, L. B., & Wear, S. (2012). Perspective: Medical education in medical ethics and humanities as the foundation for developing medical professionalism. Academic Medicine, 87(3), 334–341.

Ethical Issues in Healthcare | MD-Health.com. (2016). Md-health.com. Retrieved 16 November 2016, from http://www.md-health.com/Ethical-Issues-In-Healthcare.html

Ludwick, R. & Silva, M.C. (2003). Ethics: Ethical Challenges in the Care of Elderly Persons. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing 9(1)

Ozair, F. F., Jamshed, N., Sharma, A., & Aggarwal, P. (2015). Ethical issues in electronic health records: A general overview. Perspectives in Clinical Research, 6(2), 73–76. https://doi.org/10.4103/2229-3485.153997