Examples Of Ethical Issues In Health Care

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Recommended: A medical ethics dilemma

For any health services manager, a personal code of ethics creates the moral framework for the relationships built with patients, staff members, organizations, and the surrounding community. These relationships are extremely important to the health care facility, and a manager’s morals can be affected by, and can affect what is and isn’t done. While rules and regulations have been put in place to prevent certain situations from occurring as well as to create answers to certain problems, many ethical issues are faced in the practice of medicine. Some of these obstacles are very specific to the situation, as there are certain ethical conflicts that are very common, and developing a personal knowledge of ethics, assists in developing a methodology …show more content…

Important care information and all conversations held between a patient and their doctor, are kept strictly confidential. Access to this type of data, is strictly monitored and restricted amongst the type of health professionals allowed to view it. A common problem arises in the request of a patient’s medical records, by the patient’s private insurance provider. Since the insurance companies are footing the bill for most every procedure done to a patient under their umbrella, they have the right to view a patient's treatment to thoroughly understand what their company is being billed for. While they are allowed to see certain parts of a patient’s medical records, there are certain bits of data that should be held private as they are unrelated to the current procedures. Acts such as HIPAA, have created an outline to follow when it comes to electronic medical records being transferred to insurance companies. While situations questioning the ethics of releasing this information safely still arise, practices such as this one are being perfected daily. For a hospital, the safety of patient information is crucial to their success, and builds trust between the patient and provider. Thanks to federal and state laws, we have a legal outline for decisions in certain situations, but the ethics is …show more content…

There are many different types of therapies, techniques, and treatments that can be performed with a patient. Some patients are even victims in yheir situation, so any trauma or stress related to an offending incident should be dealt with and alleviated. In cases such as these, management is faced with the task of medical investigation. This is essentially a series or collection of hearings and investigations into the patient’s incident, to gather all relevant data. Digging into a patient’s personal life or situation can create a vast range of ethical issues, that may involve a health provider using their own judgement. A common issue with scenarios such as these, stems from certain medical decisions being left up to the physician and management. Following certain legal procedures, can still take a manager to a crossroads where they must make a medically ethical decision on behalf of their medical staff as well as on behalf of the patients in care. It has become the job of a hospital's designated ethical committee, who bears the responsibility to make sure that all medical staff are aware of the agreed principals of ethical decision making, to create consistency and protocol in common situations. This committee will essentially define certain acts as ethical in specific and common situations, so a provider can make a decision for that certain situation, regardless of any

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