Today, it is of the greatest importance to follow all professional and ethical standards to ensure professional behavior in healthcare facilities. Standards should be followed by all employees to guarantee that staff behaves in an ethical manner.
One of the most common ways to create professional standards and institutional ethics is to set up and educate institutional ethics committees (van der Kloot Meijburg, 2001). The main role of such committees is help in resolving complicated ethical problems and setting up rules to be followed by the personnel. In some countries it is a common practice to set up ethics committees in healthcare facilities to implement a strong ethics program. However, in other countries there is a lack of such committees in hospitals.
When establishing a committee, the most important part of the process is selecting the right people to become the members of the committee. Such people should be selected by all employees of the facility, and these people need to have rich experience of treating others, good reputation, maturity in their judgements, etc. When such people are selected by voting, they start meeting together to render their recommendations and help in solving ethical conflicts.
There are different sources of information that can be used to set ethical and professional standards in healthcare facilities. They can be the non-negotiable standards for hiring, values of the facilities, or Internet-based sources. In addition, the American Hospital Association Certification Center has its own Regulations for Certification Programs, and these Regulations include professional standards of conduct (AHA.org, n.d.). For example, such standards may include maintaining professional competence, avoiding conflicts of interests, following rules and regulations of the facilities, demonstrating integrity and honesty when conducting professional activities, etc.
References
AHA.org,. Professional Standards of Conduct. Retrieved 18 February 2016, from http://www.aha.org/certifcenter/proginfo/standards.shtml
van der Kloot Meijburg, H. (2001). Developing standards for institutional ethics committees: lessons from the Netherlands. Journal Of Medical Ethics, 27(90001), 36i-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jme.27.suppl_1.i36
