Introduction
Ethical matters in healthcare represent one of the major disciplines which revolve around making sure that healthcare policy-makers, personnel, lawyers, researchers and other internal and external stakeholders concerned with any healthcare element conduct their professional obligations in a manner that is ethically and morally acceptable. The consensus is almost impossible in the case of ethical concerns regardless of the efforts being put in place. There are different ethical principles which are recognized all over the healthcare world; some fundamental principles include, fair treatment of all health services beneficiaries, respect to human life, dignified treatment and support of patient’s preferences or choices ("Ethical principles in healthcare," 2015). These healthcare principles are therefore summarized as beneficence, autonomy, justice and non-maleficence. Healthcare professionals are therefore required to respect the informed consent and always strive to do well. One of the most longstanding aspects which have been used to regulate professional behaviors is the codes of ethics. Adherence to the codes of ethics applied in healthcare settings has been the leading indicator of the systematic commitments by healthcare personnel to employ integrity, especially in sensitive medical situations. Healthcare standards, therefore, increases patients’ feeling of being secure since they are assured of confidentiality and appropriate handling of some of their most individual, essential and intimate elements in their lives. The significance of research regarding ethics in healthcare is very imperative since it explains the benefits of applying principles in the clinical setting ("Ethical principles in healthcare," 2015). The ethical codes bring together common cores of concerns uniting moral issues within the healthcare setting. This paper discusses ethics in healthcare, the literature review, and the methodologies applied in this research, additionally, the paper looks into research problems including;
What is healthcare ethics?
What are the main principles of healthcare ethics?
What are the importance of healthcare ethics within the field of healthcare service delivery?
Literature Review
Ethics in healthcare is a somehow complicated construct which is mainly concerned with conducts or actions which align with, or deviate from the ethical principles. Moreover, healthcare ethics reflect different methodological practices and even epistemological paradigms within specified cultural and social settings. Over the past years, there have been different ethical developments hence a more improved recognition of the needs and choices made by patients. These developments have also led to more emphasis on the patients’ participation in their care delivery procedures and the upholding of their rights (Fulford, Dickenson, & Murray, 2002).
The UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) recognizes the need for patients to be given the chance to air their views and choices. Additionally, the organization supports the translation of these patients’ rights to into ethical codes which can be termed workable (Morse, 2009).
Different researchers have however asked different questions regarding the assumptions that it is reasonably possible to disintegrate ethics into simpler codified sets which can facilitate improved understanding of the general standards. Successively, a main subject in the literature is applying healthcare ethics to sustain evaluation and exploration of health dilemmas, rather than as foundations for healthcare service delivery rules (Hall, 2000). The recent nature of ethical considerations has also been emphasized by researchers, who have also stressed the importance of considering different ethical concerns all through the healthcare delivery procedures. This literature review covers confidentiality and anonymity, informed consent and patient protection.
The informed consent ethical principle is one of the most important ethical concerns within healthcare provision. This concern has additionally led to different arguments in its application to healthcare. Informed consent is founded on other principles which state that consent must involve an explicit action which can be written or even verbal agreement; patients can also be given a chance to offer their consent after they have been informed of all the tit bits of the recommended procedures and finally, consent should never be forced out of a patient ("Ethical principles in healthcare," 2015). Finally, consent can be open to any necessary negotiation to allow the patient the freedom to continue or withdraw from an unfavorable health care aspect or process. Recent debates regarding consent consist of the application of both active and passive consent processes and relative advantages of consent in healthcare operations.
According to the principles of mom-maleficence and beneficence underlie the ethical concern of protecting patients from harm which may arise from negligence and other faults in the course of healthcare provision. The significance of healthcare personnel to balance the need to offer the patients protection, at the same assisting them to gain the benefits of the care being delivered, is an appreciated step ("Ethical principles in healthcare," 2015). In clinical studies, the physicians and other healthcare personnel are able to determine the causes of harm and desired benefits since they are straightforward. Protecting patients from any harm which they may encounter is a very important ethical concern.
Important researchers linked with ethical confidentiality are also discussed in this review. Anonymity considerations encompass the necessity to secure and private location in which the patients and the physicians can initiate a relationship and make consultations regarding the chief medical complaint. The privacy of the participants should be protected by confidentiality and anonymity. In most cases, the discussions usually take place in consultation rooms, to better safeguard the privacy of individual patients (Fulford, Dickenson, & Murray, 2002).
A gap has been established in relation to ethics in healthcare literature. This gap is past occasional references covering the necessity of ethical training to meet specific aspects of healthcare processes. Additionally, there seems to be a want for more literature which addresses ethical concerns in healthcare to aid experienced researchers and students. However, the available literature covering ethics in health care are significant. These publications include a variation of ethical concerns which touches on the underlying principles and nature of which moral principles are founded. The literatures at our disposals also include the mechanisms in place to ensure improved moral principles are embraced and adhered to.
Research Methods
Research methods are defined as the methodologies which are applied to offer a comprehensive understanding of the statistics and the populations which are being assessed to uncover particular aspects. Research methods, therefore, cover the ways in which investigations or experiments are conducted within a study sample, to offer the researchers a basis to make comparisons. The primary research methods can be categorized as qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative research methods are exploratory while quantitative methods seek to quantify the outcomes. The central concept which is of most importance to the researchers concerning the applied methodologies is the validity theory. The validity concept measures the reliability of the methods applied in the research.
In this particular research concerning ethics in healthcare, the qualitative research method is more applicable. This is because this particular method is exploratory, and therefore dedicated to deepening the understanding concerning the ethically related opinions and knowledge of the same by healthcare personnel. This method additionally offers insights into the issue and facilitates the development of hypotheses. Additionally, qualitative research method will enable us to detect or uncover the trends in the gathered contributions and ideas regarding ethics in healthcare. Therefore, the application of these method calls for data collection techniques, including; use of unstructured questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions and even observatory methods. The method covers a relatively small sample size, and the participants are chosen to complete particular quotas.
Data Collection Methods
Focus group discussions were organized as a primary research method to uncover the healthcare professionals’ opinions and even attitudes towards healthcare ethics. Focus group discussions also offered insights into the ethics- related concerns of the healthcare professionals. Therefore, groups of five to ten healthcare professionals were formed headed by qualified research assistance. Topics including the definitions and importance of healthcare ethics were assigned to each group. Each focus group was given a maximum of twenty-five minutes to discuss the issue. The research assistants were assigned the tasks of ensuring that these discussions were maintained and that they did not deviate from the topic. The opinions, concerns, and ideas discussed in these groups were then noted by the research assistants in notebooks.
The other technique of data collection was the use of individual interviews. These discussions took place in the working offices of the health professionals who were also the research population. Personal interviews were applied to get general and extensive concerns, ideas and opinions of the healthcare professionals on ethics. These interviews were also conducted on a physical level and directed with research assistants. Written unstructured questionnaires were used to guide these interviews, and the respondent was therefore allowed to frame their answers in whichever way they found suitable. The individual interviews took approximately five minutes each. These sessions were also recorded on video clips using hand cameras and video-enabled smartphones.
Finally, observations were made in the selected healthcare facilities to track the degree in which ethics was applied in the delivery of healthcare services. However, caution was taken to avoid alerting the patients and healthcare providers regarding the research activity taking place at the respective facilities, to avoid change of behavior to suit the research. Therefore, the research assistants used tiny cameras to record the manner in which health procedures were conducted with the interest of the patient. These too were recorded in video clips and in notebooks by the research assistants.
Data Analysis Techniques
Qualitative data analysis techniques are most applicable considering the nature of the study. Qualitative data analysis consists of interpretation of the collected data, their examination and identification of the main trends established from the feedbacks gathered from the study population. To appropriately analyze the data, guiding questions are set to enable the analysts to remember the main purpose of the research and even the study questions. Since the study was qualitative in nature, the use of statistical tools is, therefore, irrelevant (Cidell, 2010).
Credible and relevant data representing the ideas and opinions regarding ethics in healthcare were further classified and the patterns established. To ensure that the following information regarding the topic was achieved, the reports were counterchecked, and the participants were contacted to verify the unclear information they had previously given. Additionally, the analysis procedure was guided and counterchecked by qualified healthcare research analysts to further ensure the reliability.
Discussions and Results
Following the study, ethics in healthcare were therefore identified as codes which regulated the actions and practices of the healthcare professionals to ensure that they make only the decisions which ensure the patients benefit from the healthcare procedures and are also protected from harm. Most health professionals agreed that ethics in healthcare were based on certain principles which further disintegrate the concept for easier application and understanding. This, therefore, proved the assumption that ethics in healthcare was one of the main aspects governing the quality of healthcare services and the patient’s satisfaction ("Informed Consent", 2013). In collaboration with other studies, the importance of ethics and moral guidelines in healthcare is therefore made evident. This research has additionally highlighted the importance of patients’ informed consent before undertaking of any healthcare procedure. The other ethical principles which include fair treatment, respect for a patient’s choices or preferences and respect for human life also hold significance in the context of ethics in healthcare. These principles have promoted the efficiency in healthcare provision, improved success rates in healthcare effectiveness and increased patients’ satisfaction. The implications of the study for the healthcare ethical developments involve the much more reinforced efforts to make ethical considerations a part of routine healthcare practices, due to the importance which has been documented. In summary, this study conducted to assess the advantages and understanding of ethics in healthcare as confirmed the importance of ethical and morally acceptable procedures in healthcare procedures. Some of the most common procedures which may require ethical consideration are issues involving abortions, transplant of vital organs, mercy-killing and blood transfusion among other concerns.
Figure 1.1: Table of Findings
T test results
T-test is essentially used to measure two conditions to determine if indeed the differences between the conditions is significant. The two essential conditions that were being measured for this data were primarily if a respondent was aware of a certain aspect of ethics or not. The following shows the results of the t-test done on the data.
The results of the t-test show that there is a clear difference between the number of participants with a clear knowledge of ethics and those without it.
Through the research conducted with the participants being healthcare professionals, it was thus concluded that the concept of ethics in healthcare is widely known, understood and practiced, nevertheless, there were insignificant discrepancies which could easily be corrected by little awareness programs concerning ethics and morals in healthcare.
Conclusions
The research applied qualitative techniques to offer useful insights into the attitudes, opinions and concern of healthcare professionals regarding healthcare ethics. Qualitative data collection methods which include individual interviews, focus group discussions and observation were useful in gathering and analyzing the awareness of these professionals concerning healthcare ethics, its fundamental principles, and the importance. Some of the limitations encountered in the course of conducting the research included transportation constraints which were encountered while trying to reach the randomly selected sample facilities. Additionally, we experienced financial constraints since the individual interviewers were supposed to be paid and we also had to purchase competitive cameras, pens and notebooks and smartphones to assist in recording the data. Due to the limited time within which to conduct the study, some of the participants were clearly disappointed by the short time which they had been offered to give feedbacks. Finally, there were insignificant hitches in the network which affected telephone communications between research assistants and the participants who had to be followed up later on. Therefore, future results should ensure adequate allocation of the necessary resources to ensure that necessary and useful data is collected for even better findings. Additionally, technology should be applied to ensure that data is collected, stored and analyzed in the most reliable and timely manner possible. This will lead to more successful researches within a smaller period of time.
References
Cidell, J. (2010). Content clouds as exploratory qualitative data analysis. Area, 42(4), 514-523. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2010.00952.x
Ethical principles in healthcare. (2015). The Pharmaceutical Journal. http://dx.doi.org/10.1211/pj.2015.20068954
Fulford, K., Dickenson, D., & Murray, T. (2002). Healthcare ethics and human values. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.
Hall, R. (2000). An introduction to healthcare organizational ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Informed Consent. (2013). Jonaʼs Healthcare Law, Ethics, And Regulation, 15(4), 145-146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/nhl.0000000000000019
Morse, J. (2009). Mixing Qualitative Methods. Qualitative Health Research, 19(11), 1523-1524. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732309349360
