Slosar’s article Embedding Clinical Ethics Upstream: What Non-Ethicists Need to Know is simply a masterpiece as far as the importance and place of ethics in clinical practice is concerned (Slosar, 2016). At the core, the article illuminates on how and why ethics should be fitted into medical practice. This current paper provides a reflection on this article.
Besides pointing the necessity of the integration of ethics in the medical profession in the efforts towards achieving person-centered care, this article moves a long way in addressing the misconception surrounding the role of ethics. Traditionally, people in both clinical and non-clinical settings have conceptualized ethics as only important when it comes to solving moral dilemmas. In other words, ethics was only considered important when decision makers had to choose between two or more undesirable outcomes. In this light, this article helps clear the air that ethics goes far beyond aiding decision-makers face conflicts and dilemmas. However, the author is not naïve to ignore the role of ethics in dealing with ethical dilemmas and moral questions. Today, as science and technology continue to evolve at breath-taking pace, the medical profession is being confronted with ethical dilemmas and moral debates than never before. Accordingly, therefore, this article deals fairly well with this issue by firmly holding that the ethics is relevant in solving dilemmas but should not be limited to that. In essence, it is admirable that patients are fairly treated through the application of ethics in clinical settings.
Having highlighted that fact, it is commendable that the author actually proceeds to indicating why clinicians need to understand about the dimensions of ethics. Irrefutably, one cannot appropriately implement a concept he or she understands very little or nothing at all about. Hence, there is need for clinicians to know what ethics is and even most importantly the different facets that constitute it. Even better, this article some of the most central dimensions of ethics in the provision of person-centered care that clinicians should be aware of. Some of these include salient moral values of both patients and patients’ families and any vagueness surrounding the goals of treatment (Slosar, 2016). Giving these dimensions helps not only provide basis to the case but also point policymakers to the appropriate direction.
With regards to directing policymakers, this article further points to the fact that there are distinct elements that distinguish a case as an ethical one. In developing a model for integrating ethics in clinical practice, policymakers need to identify metrics that separate a case from legal, spiritual care, or risk categories and place under ethics. Such measures would move a long way in helping healthcare practitioners apply ethics appropriately.
While this article plays such an instrumental role in helping understand the misconceptions that surround ethics in clinical practice, it lacks in a number of ways. For instance, although the authors succeeds in building a strong case why clinicians should understand ethics, he fails to provide empirical evidence expressing the consequences of not integrating ethics into person-centered care. In today’s time, where research has undeniably come to assume the central place in the formulation of policies, the lack of empirical support poses grace danger to any scholarly seeking to offer direction to policymaking. Actually, even some research papers making recommendations on the basis of empirically founded findings fail to incentivize policymakers simply because they are viewed as too subjective, poor sampling, and lack of universal definitions on some terms. Thus, in a time when healthcare is rapidly shifting in favor of empirically-based medicine (EBM), any researcher who wants to trigger some change should have such a profound statistical support for his or her recommendations.
All in all, this article does a superb job in showing how ethics can help attaint the quadruple aim of healthcare. More specifically, the article helps illuminate how the integration of ethics is of pivotal importance in enhancing the achievement of person-centered care, and also the elimination of harm. Even further, the article aids in addressing the misconception that surrounds ethics. In this, the author excels in showing that ethics is much more than an instrument designed to help decision-makers deal with complicated dilemmas. But despite these achievements, the article is not without limitations. The author fails to include statistical evidence affirming the importance of integrating ethics in clinical practice.
Reference
Slosar, J. P. (2016). Embedding Clinical Ethics Upstream: What Non-Ethicists Need to Know, 3-11.
