Certified Health Education Specialists
The medical field, for the past decades, has been undergoing improvements and breakthroughs. Continuous innovations in the field of health care is being made and discovered, and obviously, the human race will benefit from this the most. However, though this may seem like everything is in its good place, there are also controversies, issues, and challenges that are surrounding the medical field. One way to address these issues are through Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES). These specialists have seven responsibilities in order to fully provide the aid needed by medical specialists.
Responsibilities of a CHES
The movie “A Band Played On”, released in 1993, was about how medical experts and authorities all together addressed an AIDS epidemic in the United States and the other issues that came with this such as the prejudice faced by homosexuals. During the course of the movie, there had been several cases where the responsibilities of the CHES where put to test. The first responsibility that was practiced hugely in the movie is the assessment of needs, resources and capacity for health education and promotion. In the movie, when the epidemic spread out, the need to carefully and critically assess the situation and the capability of responders and experts to address the issue is of utmost importance. This paved the way for the experts and authorities to trace the root of the problem. The second are of responsibility that was shown in the movie was the planning of health education/promotion. There was specifically one scene where this responsibility’s application was most striking. This is the scene where Dr. Don Francis, who was played by Matthew Modine protested about how many deaths could the other members of the committee could take before they finally act on the problem. Another area of responsibility that was highlighted in the movie is the communication, promotion, and advocacy for health, health education, and profession (National Health Commission for Health Education Credentialing, 2015). The specific scene in the movie where this was strongly emphasized was when Dr. Francis ask the members of the committee on the amount that they needed to spend on lawsuits become more profitable for them as business men. This is one of the current hurdles and issues in the field of health care services, because though the focus of hospitals is or should be providing quality health care for patients, it can’t be denied that these too are business entities. Apart from this, the movie also addressed certain relevant social issues that were exhibited in the movie such as racial and gender inequality. This paved the way for the inculcating of more lessons in the movie.
Ethical Conflicts
Given the circumstances that broke out in the movie, one of the challenges, apart from the physiological and environmental hurdles that the characters were facing, was the ethical conflict that they needed to face. In the scene in the blood bank, the central characters encountered an ethical dilemma that later turned into a conflict. This scene where the central characters argued on how the blood bank rejected several donations from “black” people, did not meet the five basic principles for moral common ground specifically value of life and justice. This scene demonstrated how humans, due to race, where not looked at equally, and that there would always be a form of racial discrimination. Even though that the situation was already a matter of life and death, and drastic and immediate measures needed to be done, it is very problematic that the racial discrimination outweighed such an important issue.
References
National Commission for Health Education Credentialing. (2015). Areas of Responsibilities, Competencies, and Sub-competencies for Health Education Specialists - 2015 [Abstract]. Retrieved August 30, 2016, from http://www.nchec.org/assets/2251/hespa_competencies_and_sub-competencies.pdf
