Introduction to Ethical principles
The medical ethics involve a set of four major ethical principles which together form the most widely used ethical framework for clinical and healthcare settings. These four major ethical principles have the potential to incorporate the most crucial decision making in various possible medical ethics involving cases:
Autonomy to be respected for persons: This ethical principle upholds the sanctity of rights for individuals to make their own decisions. Thus, everyone has a right to make logical informed choices and decisions in due course of his role (UKCEN, 2011).
Beneficence: This principle ensures that a healthcare professional should always maintain a balance between the benefit of patient, risks of treatment, and the cost at which these benefits are secured for the patient (UKCEN, 2011).
Non Malfeasance: None of the treatment offered to the patient should cause any type of misappropriate harm to patients or impede his benefits (UKCEN, 2011).
Justice: All patients who have similar sort of medical conditions should be treated similarly in terms of risks, benefits, and costs involved in the treatment (UKCEN, 2011).
My learning about ethical decision making from self assessments
The self assessment results gave me the influence of Autonomy on my ethical decision making process to be more significant than any other principle. The reason that Autonomy is extremely crucial in affecting the decision making of an individual owes to the fact that most of the times patient come across a scenario when they desist the treatment which is medically a must-have for them. However, no patient can be exercised upon a medical treatment in spite of the fact that he/she is unwilling to carry it further. Similarly, I believe that even healthcare and clinical settings also oblige an individual to make such autonomous choices which might be not fit as per commercial standards. Hence, the relevance of my self assessment makes autonomy of making logical, reasoned, and informed decision by patients and service providers as a key impact on my decision making.
Impact of the ACHE standards on my decision making
The ACHE (American College of Healthcare executives) standards for ethical decision making are the most authentic intake of ethical principles for a decision taken by any healthcare operative. They define the most relevant decision making which is required for any healthcare executive to address an ethical conflict or a medical uncertainty in real life case scenarios (ACHE, 2011). These uncertainties can lead to dilemmas for the professional in making decisions regarding tradeoff between most competing values. The uncertainty involves the conflict between personal, organization level, profession related and society drive ones. Thus, for my decision making the most significant impact of ACHE standards exist in form of guidelines which tend to develop an organization wide implementation and acceptance level for ethics in healthcare. So, the ACHE standards lead the development of unitary level values which are flexible and adaptable enough to decide within the broad spectrum of values which involve ethical concern viz. clinical, individual organizational, managerial, etc (ACHE, 2011).
Impact of my individual ethics on my decision making
As an individual, my ethical principles involve upholding the integrity of my actions to avoid any harm to others, specifically in case of events where my own gains are involved. This ethical principle embarks as a forerunner to the autonomy principle of ethics in healthcare. Apart from autonomy, the ethical principles of beneficence cast a strong influence on my decision making. The beneficence ensures that any healthcare professional should ensure that his actions are intended to benefit his/her patient to the maximum possible scope. In real life professional scenario, this principle of beneficence may clash with that of autonomy principle, as respect for autonomy is crucial when the patient is not favoring the treatment to continue and the medically, the treatment is most beneficial mandate for his well being. Hence, keeping beneficence on top of all others ethical standards works fine for my decision making.
Impact of individual ethics on professional decisions
There are many ethical issues which come across the professional scope of a healthcare operative. Most of these factors evolve due to some factors which have specifically rendered to the mounting concerns in healthcare organizations over various prominent ethical issues in decision making. Some of these factors comprise of issues of access to the treatment and caliber of affordability, rising pressure on managerial staff in healthcare to reduce costs, hike in intra industry acquisitions, spurring financial and key resource issues, and increased intrusion of high end technology driving the clinical decision making process (ACHE, 2011). Hence, in such scenarios the foundation of strong individual ethics helps the rationale decisions for professionals like non harming service to society, respect for autonomous decision making for individuals, adopting a logical tradeoff between financial gains and health benefits, etc.
Relationship between ethical principles and issues in healthcare industry
In general, the Healthcare executives are generally vested with roles and responsibilities to sneak across the rising pool of ethical dilemmas which they are generally exposed to In the ethical framework of bioethics, the most prominent case which clashes with the ethical principles comes in form of the access to healthcare facilities and rights of individuals who lack on key resources and nationality to gain a non-discriminated treatment (Trotochaud, 2006). The ethical principle of justice is the most striking issue raised in modern day healthcare scenario as people who lack access to healthcare are often devoid of them due to their poverty or immigration from poorer nations. Hence, the justice of imparting equal medical treatment to all the individuals who have similar medical conditions is on stake against the rising disparities in giving the benefits of healthcare and in allocating health resources to the needy (Trotochaud, 2006).
References
ACHE (2011). Ethical Decision Making for Healthcare Executives. Retrieved online at https://www.ache.org/policy/decision.cfm
Trotochaud, K. (2006). Ethical Issues and Access to Healthcare. Journal of Infusion nursing. Retrieved online at http://ethics.emory.edu/resources/Publication/PDFs/Ethical%20issues%20and%20access%20to%20healthcare.pdf
UKCEN (2011). Ethical Frameworks:The four principles of biomedical ethics. Retrieved online at http://www.ukcen.net/index.php/ethical_issues/ethical_frameworks/the_four_principles_of_biomedical_ethics
