Healthcare ethics is sometimes also referred to as medical ethics or bioethics and simply defined, is a set of moral principles, beliefs, and values that guide medical practitioners in making important choices about giving medical care. Four core principles that define ethical responsibilities and within which medical professionals must act in the United States are: Autonomy which demands that the professional honors the patients’ right to decide on their own about the medical care to be given, Beneficence which on the other hand tasks the practitioner with the duty to assist the patients to enhance their own good, Nonmaleficence that obligates the practitioners not to do any to the patient, and Justice which demands that the medical care provider be fair and give all cases similar treatment according to Vermont Ethics Network (2011 n.p). All the four principles carry the same weight and importance across the country. Ethics is key in any healthcare practice because the provision of healthcare is a delicate practice that is a matter of life and death in some instances. There is a need to emphasize on capacity building in trying to instill ethics in the daily activities of a provider of healthcare.
Proactive integration of ethics in healthcare provision will amend and fortify the capacity of medical institutions in making clinical decisions without having to weight upon or consult the necessary experts when faced with a situation that may raise potential concerns as far as ethics is concerned. Decentralization of this decision making needs to cascade down as far as enabling the healthcare practitioner who is close to the patient to make such decisions. Equipping most personnel with this ethical competency will also ensure that there are no unnecessary delays that could be experienced when a decision has to be made at a higher level before it cascades back down to them when faced with lifesaving situations that require swift action. This will enable these practitioners closer to the patient to always point out ethical issues and considerations in their daily discharge of duties and address some of the concerns before they get rooted in the systems or get complicated to a level that would require higher levels of expertise to handle. This ethical knowledge among the lower staff would also mean that they are giving each patient the level of urgency that they need in order to alleviate any further suffering of the patients due to the long decision-making process. The number and frequency of consult requests will also go down with this as most of the requests just arise when nobody is ready to take responsibility or when they don’t want to deal with the situation hence forwarding it to a higher authority becomes the easiest way out of it. The frequency of ethics committees meeting to give a second opinion just because a patient didn’t like the first response will also reduce.
Clinical ethics is sometimes wrongly understood as means of conflict resolution especially where tough standard frameworks to position objective moral truths above and beyond patient autonomy are missing. In this context, sometimes the need for ethics in healthcare provision is seen as a sign that the provider has not fulfilled what is required of them in the right manner. Ethics should, however, be looked at beyond these standpoints and be seen as one of the means that will enable us to get more income from healthcare provision, decrease costs and offer the best patient and provider experience possible, while still holding onto the principle of healing without harming the patient. This principle gives the best context for institutionalizing ethics and ethical concepts in the medical profession as a foundation standard. On these grounds then, ethics can also be looked at as provision of service with an objective to reduce or prevent emotional, mental, spiritual and social injury, and in some occasions physical injury that occurs due to illness or the process of provision of medical care itself. Ethics also supports healthcare providers or their kin in tackling daily complicated questions arising due to the fact that every person should be considered as sacred, their individual beliefs, and the context of healing a patient without administering further injury spiritually, mentally or socially.
It is essential for the care provider to familiarize and acquaint themselves with the goals of the patient or their family to be able to advance care provision that is tailor made to suit the patient’s needs within the ethical context. These personal goals can give the care provider a clue of how they are likely to affect the patient’s decision making with regards to the treatment options they want. Any cause of gray areas that may cause misunderstanding and conflict about the individual goals of the patient or their family should also be ironed out to ease communication between the team administering care and the patients or their families as the situation of the patient shifts necessitating a change in the feasibility of the goals of treatment.
References
Vermont Ethics Network. (2011). Health Care Ethics: Overview of the Basics. Vermont Ethics Network.
