One figure found in society that is both a role model or not depending on the situation or the person are professional athletes. There are those that say that healthcare workers are role models and thus should carry themselves as such. There are others that say that the healthcare workers did not “sign up” to be role models and thus should not be held to a higher standard than the average person. There can be some credence to this as people like police, judges and, yes, medical personnel are obviously held to a higher standard than the average joe. While some may disagree, the importance of the health care profession and what it delivers demands that the people in said professional uphold the highest levels of ethics, precision and following procedure to the letter.
Analysis
As for whether healthcare workers have a “duty” to be role models, the answer is really a “yes”, but with a twist. Indeed, many healthcare workers are mostly unknown and/or faceless to the people they serve. While many people in the profession are client-facing, there are many others that do work behind the scenes such as in labs and so forth. Even those that see and interact with the clients do so in a usually fleeting way and there is not always a connection in terms of knowing names, faces and so forth. The field can be a bit cold at time given its very transactional and procedural nature. Even so, healthcare workers, as noted in the introduction, are in a profession and situation that is unique from others. Sure, they are not professional athletes or entertainers that have their names emblazoned in magazines and newspapers. However, their job and doing that job right is of the utmost importance and doing the job wrong or incompletely can literally kill people or affect their quality of life. Healthcare workers do not have a duty to act as role models per se but they do have a duty to do the right and ethical thing every single time. Indeed, mistakes can be made and diagnoses can be wrong. However, perfection and improvement should be the goal without exception.
Conclusion
As far as recommendations, the author would say that healthcare workers need to do their best to stay attuned to their craft and make sure they do things based on what the agreed-upon procedure is, not to mention those procedures should be the product of evidence-based practice and not just what a given professional or manager might think is best. Zero-tolerance and zero deviance from procedure is not a solution either but exceptions should be decided and executed on a case-by-case basis and only with good and established reasons for doing so. Whever possible, the patient should have full knowledge and consent of what is going on.
Works Cited
AMA. "Principles of Medical Ethics". ama-assn.org. n.p., 2016. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
