Question

Morrison (2012) repeatedly emphasizes the role of the health care manager as a moral agent -- someone who morally affects or is morally affected by actions. She further emphasizes the importance of a personal ethic - a moral framework within which the appropriate relationship with employees, patients, organization and community develops. Ideally, the content of this course gives the student an opportunity to consider their own personal ethic within the various theoretical standpoints and case studies presented. The purpose of the reflective journal is to facilitate that personal exploration.

The Reflective Essay consists of a minimum 5 page essay that summarizes the students early thoughts on his or her own personal ethical framework. This essay is intended to give you an opportunity to reflect deeply on your own ethical framework that is, the nature, sources and implications of the values, beliefs and ethical perspectives that guide your personal and professional practice. Although the essay need not be limited to the described format, it must minimally address the following items:

1. Most of us find ourselves using several or all of the ethical perspectives described in our discussion and readings; however, most of us are also generally inclined to one or two particular perspectives. Comment on which of the ethical perspectives (e.g., deontology, utilitarianism, etc) seems the most consistent with your own perspective.
2. What ethical perspective is the most troublesome to you? Examine the various ethical principles discussed in class. Which principles are most important to you? How important are these principles in relation to each other when they are in conflict? Under what circumstances have you, or would you, feel justified in violating one or more of these principles? What other values do you hold that support or conflict with these principles?

The reflection paper will be evaluated on content (depth of thought), presentation (clarity and organization), and writing mechanics (grammar, punctuation, proper use of APA format for references). See individual journal scoring rubrics for detail

Answer 1

Answers:

Healthcare Ethics :

Health care ethics is the field of applied ethics that is concerned with the vast array of moral decision-making situations that arise in the practice of medicine in addition to the procedures and the policies that are designed to guide such practice.

Major Ethical Perspectives

Ethics is about the values that should be respected by all healthcare workers while interacting with individuals, families and communities. Ethics may sometimes be considered a scary term by some healthcare professionals because it is a word that may bring to mind an accusation of wrongdoing or mistakes, but this is not the case.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism.

Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. It is the only moral framework that can be used to justify military force or war. It is also the most common approach to moral reasoning used in business because of the way in which it accounts for costs and benefits.

However, because we cannot predict the future, it’s difficult to know with certainty whether the consequences of our actions will be good or bad. This is one of the limitations of utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism also has trouble accounting for values such as justice and individual rights. For example, assume a hospital has four people whose lives depend upon receiving organ transplants: a heart, lungs, a kidney, and a liver. If a healthy person wanders into the hospital, his organs could be harvested to save four lives at the expense of one life. This would arguably produce the greatest good for the greatest number. But few would consider it an acceptable course of action, let alone the most ethical one.

So, although utilitarianism is arguably the most reason-based approach to determining right and wrong, it has obvious limitations.

Deontology

Deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action.^[1] It is sometimes described as duty-, obligation-, or rule-based ethics.^[2][3] Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. In this terminology, action is more important than the consequences.

Various Ethical principles:

Ethical principles are part of a normative theory that justifies or defends moral rules and/or moral judgments; they are not dependent on one's subjective viewpoints.

Four principles of medical ethics:

· Autonomy – The right for an individual to make his or her own choice.

· Beneficence – The principle of acting with the best interest of the other in mind.

· Non-maleficence – The principle that “above all, do no harm,” as stated in the Hippocratic Oath.

· Justice – A concept that emphasizes fairness and equality among individuals.

On average, individuals have a significant preference for non-maleficence over the other principles, however, this preference does not seem to relate to applied ethical judgements in specific ethical dilemmas^.

This four principles approach is supposed to fulfil the need of a culturally neutral approach to thinking about ethical issues in healthcare however, some authors have challenged the appropriateness of communicating in terms of these four principles with patients with a different background. Westra et al suggest that the four principles approach may be very helpful in analysing ethical dilemmas, but when communicating with patients with different backgrounds, an alternative approach is needed that pays genuine attention to the different backgrounds.

Morals and Ethics

We can differentiate between morality and ethics. Morality could be understood as an individual persons approach to questions of a right/wrong or good/bad. Ethics is the reflection on different moral positions with the aim to keep a group collectively able to act.

Ethical reflection seeks to explore alternatives to the status quo and reveals existing moral contradictions. Moral contradictions cannot and should not be resolved, instead they should be appreciated and solutions worked out through communication. Understanding each other's values, obligations and rights helps patients, healthcare professionals, health insurance and health facilities to ensure a more equal and constructive decision making-process for everyone involved. It requires specific abilities to recognise all ethical aspects of a situation and to develop respect towards other systems of value.

We could see ethical competence as an ability to formulate, justify and reflect on ones own moral orientations; to have the ability to recognise moral differences in practice; and to be able to apply sound judgement in communications to find solutions for ethical dilemmas.

Conclusion

Health care ethics is a multi-faceted and fundamentally important issue for the citizens of any society because the provision of health care is essential to the well-being of each person, and the ways in which people are treated, concerning their health care, bears importantly on their health status. The many moral issues that arise out of the provision of health care—from those that are inherent in the relationship between the health care professional and the patient to those associated with abortion and euthanasia, from those to be encountered in biomedical or behavioral human subject research to those that have come about as a result of reproductive and genetic knowledge and technologies, and from those concerning the harvesting and transplantation of human organs to those that stem from public policy decisions as determinative of the allocation of health care services and procedures—are perennial issues. To attempt to clarify these moral issues by use of the philosophical analysis of the language and the concepts that underlie them is, at least in theory, to provide a framework in accordance with which to make better quality decisions concerning them.