Approaching 21st Century Healthcare Ethically

Introduction

In the United States, various health principles are there to ensure that all health programs are implemented. The policies were designed by a task force guided by the Public Health Leadership Institute (PHLI) in the year 2000 (Kroth & Young, 2018). All the principles in all the states serve the same purpose besides ensuring the implementation of the programs. The public health code of ethics targets institutions and how they work together with communities. All of the principles are also there to ensure that health workers follow the regulations. Primarily, ethics ensure that there is a proper practice in the public health sector. The code of ethics is enlisted with vital utilities and credence related to the public health sector’s objectives. All the 12 principles in the public health code of ethics can be implemented and ensure that they provide conditions for every person to be healthy in the United States.

The principles require that the person implement them or the health professionals to adhere to all the health sector requirements and the World Health organization (Leonardi, 2018). Without proper adherence to the elements, implementing the principles will be quite imperative. Currently, the living conditions in society make it challenging for some of the principles to be applied. With the ongoing political and socio-economic disparities, it can become demanding for some of the laws to be in place in a proper manner. The first principle that can fail to be implemented by public health professionals is the harsh conditions of acting conveniently on the facts that they have about a given health concern. The second one that can be challenging is for the health institutions to ensure that all their employees have competency in their profession. The third principle that might fail to be implemented is the principle of addressing the primary causes of diseases while targeting to prevent terrible health outcomes.

The Approach of the Principles

The Principle of Acting on time as Public Health Professionals

The principle is there to ensure that all the public health professionals work well when provided with given information about a public health concern. When any health concern is raised either by the community or observations from the health centers, it is ethical for them to work efficiently to respond to the problem and ensure that lasting solutions are provided (Anthony, 2008). Whether the issue affects the whole nation or just a small area, it is quite moralized for public health professionals to see that the problem is eliminated from the public. When, for example, there are signs of an outbreak of a given disease in the country and it is only the community members who are informed, the public health professionals must corroborate that matter is well addressed.

Recently, the principle has been facing various setbacks when executing it by the public health officers. The challenges that bar them from making that the policy is well implemented range from political to socio-economical in the United States. The first one was extreme societal pressure upon the public health officials. The public members believe that it is their right to have proper protection of their health and be guaranteed adequate healthcare. Whenever they experience poor health conditions, they keep on mounting pressure on the public health professional. The officials will now have two problems at hand; one of them will be to ensure that they deal with the pressure from the members of society and, secondly, deal with the public health problem.

Public health professionals also fail to deal with public health problems because of the lack of an unproductive rewarding, and disciplining system. Whenever the health professionals are not rewarded for the times that they act quickly on the health matters, it will make them be discouraged (Sakyi & Bawole, 2009). At the same time, the ones that do not partake all the requirements of the ethics of public health fail to get the punishment due to poor leadership. This character makes them have the behavior of failing to carry out health concerns on time.

The principle of having Public Health Institutions ensuring Professional Competence

In the United States, there exist more than 200 professions in the sector of healthcare (Kroth & Young, 2018). As more technologies are being invented in the health sector, more public health providers will emerge. All the institutions have the responsibility of ensuring that all the public health providers work under competency (Melby et al. 2016). The institutions follow the basics of this ethic by ensuring that professionals have proper working licenses and certification, maintaining their accreditation and proper registration.

The challenge that comes with the implementation of this principle is inadequate supervision by the government. Once political issues are going on in the country, it will be hard for the government to look into some problems affecting the public health sector. Some public health institutions operate under private licenses, and they will hire more professionals without checking their level of competency. When there are various political problems in the nation, the government will not properly look into the operations of various public health institutions. It is unethical for the institutions to keep incompetent public health professionals at their disposal.

The Principle of Addressing Fundamental Causes of Diseases to Prevent Negative Health Outcomes.

The principle is among the most important among the laws in the code of ethics. It is a principle that brings a good shape in the objectives of public health. It should be implemented in a way that should involve all the members of the public, health professionals, and the government at large. However, the principle has become quite a problem when it comes to implementing it in the nation.

The primary issue facing the proper implementation of the principle is the lack of competent analysis of some of the diseases’ causes. The government may fail to provide resources for researching the origins of various diseases in the nation. This delaying in the providence of economic resources towards the public health sector is caused by a lack of implementation of some bills affecting the health sector (Thomas et al. 2002). Once the political issues are solved and the financial resources provided, it will be quite easy for the principle to be implemented by the public health professionals.

Conclusion

All three principles of public health ethics can be achieved if there are proper correctional measures in place. Like the rest of the other tenets regarding public health ethics, they are meant to ensure that public health professionals protect people’s health every time. Once the problems get well addressed and corrected, all the 12 principles regarding public health principles will be implemented, and thus improve the health status of the nation will be improved.

References

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Kroth, K. M & Young, M. S. (2018). Sultz &Young’s Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization and Delivery. Retrieved from https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/584304/sp/172651332/mi/557793251?cfi=%2F4%2F4

Leonardi, F. (2018). The Definition of Health: Towards New Perspectives. International Journal of Health Services. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0020731418782653

Melby, M. K., Loh, L. C., Evert, J. et al. (2016). Beyond Medical “Missions” to Impact-Driven Short-Term Experiences in Global Health (STEGHs): Ethical Principles to Optimize Community Benefit and Learner Experience. Academic Medicine, Volume 91. Issue 5. Pp. 633-638. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000001009

Sakyi, E. & Bawole, M. (2009). Challenges in implementing code of conduct within the public sector in Anglophone West African countries: Perspectives from public managers. Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research. Volume 14. Pp. 68-78. Retrieved from https://academicjournals.org/jpapr

Thomas, J. C., Sage, M., Dillenberg, J., et al. (2002). A code of ethics for public health. American journal of public health, 92(7), 1057–1059. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.92.7.1057

Approaching 21st Century Healthcare Ethically

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