The Significance of Ethics in Healthcare
Ethics and law for health professionals explain how to handle the main ethical and legal issues that healthcare professionals face in their daily routine at work, putting them at risk in case of unfortunate eventualities. Plans to manage the cost of healthcare are subject to increasing pressure on health professionals to do more but with little rewards. Inadequate resources contribute to critically tough decisions in the health care quality. Ethics in health care explains that health professionals’ practice, ethical principles of doing good, justice, autonomy, and no harm can help resolve challenging situations (Allan, 2019).
What is considered legal in healthcare might not be regarded as ethical. Meaning there is the ever-looming threat of being sued for Malpractice and negligence (Herring, 2020). Some of the ethical issues that are faced by medical professionals in the course of delivering their professional responsibilities to the patient are as shown;
Patient Confidentiality: Information about the patient medical history and medical condition is private. The law also is clear on who can see the information and who cannot. However, these are grey areas; withholding this information would be unethical because it may harm the patient.
Patient Relationships: It is unlawful for a professional to enter into a personal relationship with the patient during service delivery (Judson, 2021).
Negligence and Malpractice: health professionals can be sued if they fail to provide critically needed treatment to the patient.
Issues Related to Physical Assisted Suicide (PAD): This is an increasing option for medical care, but it has led to many medics being sued by the patient’s family.
Good medical practice or code denotes what is expected of the registered health professional to issue services to the patient (McDonald, 2019). There are published guidelines to support good health care practices, policies for mandatory notification, patient consultation, sexual boundaries, and supervisory practices.
According to section 15(3) of the Australia healthcare Act, the secretary in the department of health and services has come up with a procedure for determining whether a help professional has breached the codes of ethics. Also, guidelines have been laid down on how-to to develop sanctions (POZGAR, 2019). These procedures have been made publicly available to agree with section 15(7) of the Healthcare Act. The Secretary of the Department of Health established the guidelines under subsection 15(3) of the health and public service Act 1999 (Stanford, 2020).
Conclusion
Healthcare professionals and patients encounter legal and ethical issues concerning medical treatments and practices every day. Being qualified in health care and managing professionalism can enable you to be aware of the moral and legal problems that may challenge you in your career (Smajdor, 2022). Formal structures such as health and ethics committees that include employees and community stakeholders can create a conducive environment of ethical performance by improving transparent, open decision-making while building trust (Wilkinson, 2020).
References
Allan, S. (2019). Law and Ethics for Health Practitioners.
Herring, J. (2020). Medical law and ethics.
Judson, K., & Harrison, C. (2021). Law & ethics for health professions.
McDonald, F., & Then, S.-N. (2019). Ethics, law and health care: A guide for nurses and midwives.
POZGAR, G. E. O. R. G. E. D. (2019). Legal & ethical issues for health profls + advantage access card. Place of publication not identified: Jones & Bartlett Learning
Smajdor, A., Herring, J., & Wheeler, R. (2022). Oxford handbook of medical ethics and law.
Stanford, C. C., & Connor, V. J. (2020). Applied law and ethics for health professionals.
Wilkinson, D., Savulescu, J., & Herring, J. (2020). Medical ethics and law: A curriculum for the 21st century.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
