Ethical Principle Of Autonomy In Health Care

You started your first job at a large hospital. You are assigned a patient to treat who no one wants to work with because the patient always says “NO”. The Occupational Therapy team leader tells you that you need to treat the patient because the doctor is angry that the patient has not been receiving therapy. You are told that the patient’s nurse has called to complain to the therapy department about the fact that the patient has not been receiving therapy

Ethics of healthcare depends on 4 moral standards and how they are utilised; autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Autonomy, which means self-governance, is the rule for regarding the privileges of a person to settle on a choice for them self, and respecting that decision. In healthcare this implies regarding a patient's choice on treatments, regardless of the possibility that it could bring about damage or demise to themselves. Autonomy is about self-rule, control free, without impact or influence from any other person, and is tied in with making an educated and un-forced choice about their care and medicines, based from their qualities and inclinations.

One nurse stated "it's tough to educate your client when it could be at the expense of your job." There are times when the OBGYN and/or client makes a decision for interventions (pitocin, artificial rupture of membranes, or c-section) that the nurse may not feel is in the best interest of the client. Some L&D nurses believe this to be related to convenience of the doctor, for example, doing a cesarean in order to "make it to a golf game on time." Doctor's may tell the parent's to be the cesarean is for failure to progress...when maybe it is actually failure to progress fast enough for doctor convenience. The ethical dilemma here includes the question...does the L&D nurse speak up by educating the client on the risks and benefits, or just go along with the

The tem ethics refers to the moral principles that guide a person’s behavior, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of their actions. In the field of nursing, these moral principles govern the relationship between the nurse and the patient, members of the healthcare team, and society at large. Nurses must constantly question whether a certain procedure or course of treatment is in the best interest of the patient. When viewing the film “Miss Evers’ Boys”, it was clear that the doctors, researchers, and even Miss Evers were not acting in the best interest of all the patients. This movie depicted true events of a study that took place in Macon County, Alabama, in 1932. This study was referred to as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis

Nursing has come a long way from being the hand maidens of the physician to having control over nursing knowledge and practice. It now has two essential ingredients of accountability and autonomy. There is more demand from the nurses now than in the past when all they were expected to do was just to provide comfort and care. They were just meant to assist the physician during treatment, assist in the patients personal hygiene administer medication that is prescribed by the physician and dress wounds. These were just things that any woman could do. Nursing demands much more now as they are educators, client advocate, and managers. More so it is a requisite for any field of endeavour to attain professional status, it is actually an attribute of a profession.

Physician-assisted death is the practice in which a physician provides a mentally competent patient with the means to take his/her own life, usually in the form of prescribing death-dealing medications. It first became legal in the United States in Oregon in 1998. It is now legal in four other states: Washington, California, Montana, and Vermont. In order for one to exercise their right to die this way, the law states that the patient must be at least 18 years old, be mentally competent, be diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months, and must wait at least fifteen days before filling the death-dealing prescriptions. This controversial practice has raised the question of whether or not it is ethical for a physician

The professional values that I have chosen to reflect on is consent. Using Driscoll (2007) model of reflection which is components circle involves three events: what? So what? Now what? A reflection account will focus on my experience of working in the surgical ward. Confidentiality will be maintained as the British Medical Association (BMA,2016) states that “All identifiable patient information, whether written, computerised, visually or audio recorded or simply held in the memory of health professionals, is subject to the duty of confidentiality”, hence pseudonym will be used and the patient will be referred to as Mr Eric.

Healthcare professionals should have a clear understanding from the beginning of their jobs to provide care that is catered to their patient’s needs and does no harm to their patient, yet some caretakers tend to walk the fine line between what is ethical and what is convenient. In Carolyn Buppert’s article, “Can I Prescribe for My Elderly Father?”, Buppert describes a situation involving nurse practitioners prescribing medications to family members for different reasons; nevertheless, this is a violation of the principle of justice because it is against the law to provide medications to family members without proper medical documentation (citation). Not only do ethical situations arise within the professional standpoint but also most workers who do not have day to day contact with patients do not realize that they must also provide care that follows the four principles. For instance, a chef that prepares the meals for the patients may not realize that the principle of nonmaleficence affects them, but if they were to prepare a meal that consists of nuts for a patient who has a known nut allergy, then they would be causing harm to the patient. Although the chef may not have been aware of the allergy, it is still could affect the treatment given to the patient if he or she has a reaction to the food. Although these incidences are where one principle can affect the lives of patients, there are also incidences where two principles do not integrate for the good of the patient. In cases such as Dax Cowart where he was in extreme pain, his one wish was to die; however, if he died in a way that could have been avoidable, then it would have been a violation of the principle of nonmaleficence, but if the patient wants to die, then it was support the principle of

There are many ethical issues facing health care at any time and it is impossible to say definitively which is the most pressing or the most important. Health care professionals are expected to base their practice on a set of ethical principles, including truthfulness, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and confidentiality. Ethical issues can arise, however, when a l professional is called upon to act in opposition to personal values or in cases where the values of patient, health care worker, and sponsoring institution conflict. The following issues are presented in no order.

If pain according to Ignatavicius and Workman (2010) is what the patient says it is and it exist when and where the patient says it does, why does research studies show disparity in treatment with patients suspected of substance abuse or those diagnosed with substance abuse disorder?

Obesity is an epidemic in America that is continuously becoming worse than it was a few years ago. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 40% of U.S women are obese; also, the prevalence of childhood obesity remains at 17%. Obesity in America has been attributed to many factors. For instance, over consumption of fast food. The fast food industry in America is a vast industry that makes quick, satisfying meals at a very low cost. Also increased rate of obesity has been related to numerous socioeconomic aspects such as poverty, recipients of SNAP benefits, joblessness and low income. According to the U.S Census data, Alabama is the fourth poorest state with 12.7 percent of the residence living below the poverty line. Likewise, there are numerous health effects associated with obesity include; hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, Joint problems, psychosocial effects among many others.

Ethics can be explained as principles a society develops to guide decisions about what is right and wrong. Ethical principles that society has are influenced by religion, history, and experience of the people in the group. Meaning that ethics is based on guidelines we have learned while growing up, that helps us differentiates what is right and what is wrong. For example, some people think health care should be a human right as others think it should only be available to those who can pay for it. Each group of people is guided by the principles they believe in. Ethics in health care play a vital role every day. The practice of health care includes many scenarios that have to do with making adequate decisions when it comes to patient’s life. For the purpose of this paper, I want to explain the occurrence and some of the ethical concerns found in a case of an elderly patient, who believed in Curanderos and didn’t realize the harm she was doing in regards to her health by not taking her medications.

While it is known that adequate water and nutrition is needed for survival, many health professionals are currently going through the dilemma of whether it is ethical or not to provide artificial tube feeding for patients with terminal diseases. Family and Consumer Science professionals, such as dietitians, know the benefits and risks associated with artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) and have the ability to suggest the most ethical decision to this controversial issue. Recent studies have demonstrated that artificial nutrition provides higher risk of medical complications, increases pain, and false hope of health recovery. Over the years, this historical debate has changed the way the community supports or opposes ANH on terminal disease cases, (Brody et al., 2011) however the justice for each patient is different depending on their diagnosis (Best, 2010). To further demonstrate the intensity of this issue, the research of Hartshell and Williams (2010) indicates that this emotional decision is better made by the patient themselves. Family and Consumer Science professionals, such as dietitians, can provide support to solve this problem by insuring that dietetic students have an ethical educational background incorporated into their major (Hira, 1996).

In this case we are introduce to a 38-year-old patient who suffer a car accident around eight years ago. During the car accident he suffer an aorta rupture that left him in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Over the past five years Bob has been taken care for at a Catholic nursing home were he receives tube feeding, fluids and treatments for complications of his state. Recently his wife Lola and Bob’s parents have decided that they would want to discontinue Bobs feeding tube. The physician agree that it was acceptable to remove the feeding tube, but since it was a Catholic nursing home that maybe they would have to remove it somewhere else. The problem that we are presented with in this case study is whether it is ethically correct to remove the feeding tube of someone who is in a persistent vegetative state and whether this should be

The word “euthanize” means to bring about a person’s death to relieve them from serious distress. The topic of euthanasia in medicine has evolved since intensive care was first instituted. Before the 1950’s, a simple model was used to determine when someone was dead: the individual was dead when his or her heart stopped beating. In the modern light, the answer to this question isn’t as clear. With advancements in organ transplantation and other medical technologies, the stopping of a beating heart is no longer a definite death sentence. This prolonging of life brings about many ethical dilemmas in the field of medicine. One of the issues is patient autonomy. The practice of euthanasia has been established to put the choice back into the hands of the patient. To better understand euthanasia, there are five different types.