Ethics Case Study Sallie Thomas

For Ms. Sallie Thomas, a phlebotomist manager at Upper Valley Medical Center, she never knows exactly what each day will bring. Working in a hospital, especially the emergency room, there are wide ranges of people she will interact with and potentially collect blood from. Most of all, she believes that the patients come first. She has always held herself and her employees to the ethical codes of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and fidelity. However, like in all health care practice, there are challenges she faces.
To be fair, Ms. Thomas agrees completely with the points made in both the professional and the organization’s code of ethics, and believes that she conducts them all easily. Despite conducting herself well with ethical codes, there are still challenges that she faces with autonomy. Often these challenges stem from having to practice from a legal or lawful standpoint rather than an ethical one. There is a case she spoke of where a man had been brought in by the police and was handcuffed to the gurney. She was required to take the man’s blood but he did not want his blood taken. The man flailed and managed to kick Ms. Thomas in the stomach, but she still did her job and retrieved the sample. Regarding ethics, it was against the man’s autonomy to

The issues that Ms. Thomas will see include the phlebotomist making promises or lying to the patients about what they will do. For example, if a phlebotomist is about to take blood from a patient they may say things like, “Oh, this won’t hurt at all,” or, “I won’t dig around, don’t worry.” Often, there is some level of pain involved with taking blood, but to say that there will be none is lying to the patient and makes the phlebotomist less trustworthy in the eyes of the patient. Accordingly, if someone were to promise not to dig to find a vein and then does, then they are not keeping their word and breaking fidelity with a