Hospital Waste Management Case Study

883 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essays about ethics in healthcare

Ethical consideration Many ethical dilemmas develop from the fact that while hospitals act as the primary ‘stations’ that provides health services for individuals and the community, there is a negative impact of hospital waste on the environment and the public health. The lack of proper acknowledgment and management of these ethical issues could lead to violation of human rights, along with poor outcomes in terms of waste management strategies or interventions. Sustainability Each hospital produces daily a considerable amount of waste, and the process of management infectious waste could introduce hazards to the surrounding environment, causing additional environmental, economic, and disease burden. Small hospitals generally constitute a problem due to being either far from management sites or lack needed infrastructure even for using the minimal standards. Dumping in public water systems, leaching from landfills, or heavy use of incineration, are examples of management process that poses direct risks to the water, soil, and air. Environmental Impact Assessment and risk assessment tools should be used efficiently while planning for building a …show more content…

Chemicals, toxins, waste water, ashes and other outcomes of infectious waste management process will impact the immediate surrounding and distal environment, in turn affecting the health of individuals in other sites, or countries. Without proper control, medical waste could be illegally traded, cross borders and increase health risks at distant sites, adding in their burden. Due to this interconnectedness, it is difficult to pin the responsibility on one actor; local, national, or international. The ethical response would require cooperation and resource mobilization across these levels in consensus on the importance of action towards these potential

Show More
Related

  • Errors In The Hot Zone

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the most common forms of errors found in the medical field is the recycling of soiled equipment. The repeated use of dirty medical equipment is found commonly in the poor regions of the world

    Read More

  • Ethical Case Studies

    2366 Words  | 5 Pages

    Healthcare ethics is defined as a system of moral principles that guide healthcare workers in making choices regarding medical care. At its core lies our attitudes regarding our personal rights and obligations we have to others. When an unprecedented situation comes into play, we rely on medical ethics to help determine an outcome that would be the best case scenario for all involved. In order to appropriately review this case study, we must first identify the key stakeholders, the ethical principles, policy implications at the federal, state, and local levels, financial implications, and a viable resolution for the situation.

    Read More

  • Essay On Administrative Waste In Healthcare

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    Administrative Waste in U.S. Healthcare Regardless of technological advancement, life-saving skills and abilities and first-world resources, the outlandish cost of healthcare in the United States far surpasses any other country in the world. From price gouging, to double billing, to overbilling, to inefficient and expensive operations, the United States wastes $750 billion every year through our healthcare system. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), $200 billion of that astronomical number is due to nothing more than administrative waste.

    Read More

  • Ethical Principles In Health Care

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ethical principals are extremely important to understand in the healthcare field. Ethical responsibilities in any situation depend on the role of the healthcare worker and the nature of the decision being made. Healthcare administrators and professionals must make ethical decisions that can be an everyday or controversial situation. When making such decisions, it is imperative to consider the four major principles of ethics: autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and distributive. By using these four principles, ethical decisions can effectively be made. For the purpose of this paper, examined will be the example of the treatment of an uninsured homeless patient. Poor health care be a cause and a result of homelessness.

    Read More

  • Case-Based Environmental Ethics

    1751 Words  | 4 Pages

    Cases have been widely used in medical ethics and law. In both fields, numerous books and articles about cases have appeared, including book-length catalogs of cases. I argue that pluralistic casuistry provides an adequate approach to environmental ethics. It retains the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses of the other approaches. Importantly, it resolves some broader theoretical issues and provides a clear, explicit methodology for education and praxis.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Medical Waste

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    Have you or a loved one ever been hospitalized? Most of the time when we go to a hospital, we are only concerned that our loved one is receiving the best care available. The best care should mean that the hospital uses sterile supplies and disposes of them appropriately. All these sterile supplies generate a lot of waste. Medical waste is the third largest source of waste in the United States. (Globalization 101) Hospitals in the United States produce more than 5.9 million tons of waste annually. (Practice Greenhealth) Large urban hospitals can generate more than two million tons of waste each year. (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives ) Medical waste is a major problem and if it is not disposed properly it can affect humans and other things in this world. Dumping refuse into the ocean, particularly medical waste, affects not only sea life, but also human life.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Waste In Nursing

    1394 Words  | 3 Pages

    The premise of the methodology includes the removal of waste; waste is a non-value activity in which the patient will not want to pay for that particular activity (Anderson-Dean, 2012). Eight types of waste found in most organizations include defects, overproduction, transportation, waiting, inventory, motion, over-processing, and human potential (Kimsey, 2010) (see Appendix B for waste examples in healthcare). In order for change to occur, healthcare staff must be trained in addressing and recognizing each of the mentioned wastes (Kimsey,

    Read More

  • Nt1310 Unit 3 Assignment 3

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    Each waste stream shall be treated as a potential health hazard. Excessive exposure to these waste streams must be reduced to the lowest possible level by using appropriate

    Read More

  • Case Study of Waste Water Treatment Plants

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    Waste water treatment plants are essential to communities of all sizes and must work efficiently. Waste water treatment plant primary priority and responsibility is the treatment of incoming sewage water by the removal of biological and chemical wastes so it can be treated and recycled for future use. There are many government agencies and standards set forth to govern and observe the successful treatment of sewage such as: the Department of Environmental Quality, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and the Clean Water Act of 1972. Compliance and constant monitoring of the treatment plant’s operations are important; as they protect the surrounding community. A spill or backflow of sewage due to a complete system malfunction could potentially be detrimental to the environment and local community. A precise system, of which must be compliant according to government standards, is critical to maintain low levels of wastes that are returned to neighboring water systems after treatment.

    Read More

  • The ABC System: The Waste Management Of An Organization

    977 Words  | 2 Pages

    Besides, an organisation can adopt a technique of activity-based costing (ABC) as an approach to support its sustainability objectives. ABC system is a technique of assigning overhead costs to products and services by identifying the cost drivers. ABC technique will first identify each activity cost that is involved in the process of production, then assign the cost to each product and service on the basis of each activity consumption in the production of each product and service (Drury, 2012, p. 253). ABC system is an effective method to account for costs of products and services. This is because ABC system allocates indirect costs based on a cause-and-effect relationship (Drury, 2012, p. 269). ABC system allocates overhead costs to cost

    Read More

  • Animal Extinction Essay

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    While our population continues to grow, so does the amount of waste we produce. Due to the fact that there are so many humans, a majority of the waste we produce do not get disposed of properly and it eventually ends up contaminating the la...

    Read More

  • Hazardous Waste

    1552 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hazardous waste and its proper disposal have become a major sociological problem today due to its capability of contaminating the area in which we live and its potential to be lethal to all living things. In order for the United States and the rest of the world to save itself from a potentially life threatening problem they must fix the causes which lead to the improper disposal of hazardous wastes and like materials. Some reasons that hazardous waste has become a problem in the United States today is due to the breakdown in enforcing laws for the proper disposal of such wastes, a lack of initiative on big companies behalf to spend money on proper disposal, and the ease of disposing of such wastes illegally.

    Read More

  • Pharmaceutical Waste And Its Effect On Our Environment

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pharmaceutical waste seems to be one of the dominant elements that are prevalent in our waters, and other aspects of the environment. These aforementioned elements are largely becoming a concern in today’s society because its effects have proven to be harmful towards our environment, and all of its existing forms of life. Through various ways, whether controllable or uncontrollable, pharmaceutical waste slowly and increasingly multiplies its presence within the environment. Additionally, it eventually trickles down into our waterways and causes a large array of damages. Some of the most common ways that this waste gets into the water includes: disposal through the drainage systems, farming fertilization methods and the maintenance of treatment plants. These methods are self-explanatory through their brief discussions, but it helps decipher whether the disposal of these dangerous wastes are intentional or not.

    Read More

  • Solid Waste Management

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    Policy is needed to regulate which course of action should be taken and how it should be implemented. Because of this, many plans and policies revolving around the management of solid waste have been put in place. Sometimes however, a particular policy can have its shortfalls, potentially resulting in its negative aspects outweighing the positive ones. According to the Conference Board of Canada Report, “Canadians dispose of more municipal solid waste per capita than any other country” (2013). Solid waste management in particular, involves many aspects, ranging from packaging waste, food waste, etc. (White & Franke 1999), hence, the following analysis revolves around household and commercial waste – referred to as Municipal Solid Waste (White & Franke. 1999) – in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Municipal waste is a major health and environmental concern as it contributes to numerous problems like habitat destruction, surface groundwater pollution, and other forms of air, soil, and water contamination. Waste disposal methods like incineration create toxic substances, and landfills emit methane, which contributes to global warming. According to the Zero Waste Objective Report, “The impact of climate change and the increasing awareness of the role of “waste” and “wasting” in the production of greenhouse gas emissions is a constant environmental pressure… (2009). This leads to an increasing limitation of government to prevent and control the volume and toxicity of products in the waste stream and a growing need to shift responsibility to the product manufacturer.

    Read More

  • Innovative Waste Disposal

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    Traditional methods of waste disposal have proven to be ineffective and have caused harmful effects on the environment. The most popular and inexpensive way to get rid of garbage is burial, but burying your problems does not necessarily mean getting rid of them. Landfill sites pose as severe ecological threats as these mass garbage dump yards overflow with trash and frequently contaminate our air, soil and water with hazardous wastes. About 400 million tons of hazardous wastes are generated each year1. A large-scale release of these materials can cause thousands of deaths and may poison the environment for many years. For example many industrial companies around the world cannot afford to enforce the strict pollution regulations set by many developed countries. This usually forces these types of companies to move to developing countries where pollution regulations are very lenient. These developing countries knowingly accept environmentally hazardous companies usually because they are in desperate need of employment. The harmful effects of these companies were clearly illustrated in the 1960s and 1970s when residents living near Minamata Bay, Japan, developed nervous disorders, tremors, and paralysis in a mysterious epidemic. The root was later found to be a local industry that had released mercury, a highly toxic element, into Minamata Bay. The disaster had claimed the lives of 400 people1. Since 1970 you can bet that a lot more than 400 people have died as a result of waste disposal. If the type of waste disposal were cheaper and effective we wouldn’t have to deal with waste problems, which still plague mankind today.

    Read More

More about Hospital Waste Management Case Study

Open Document