Healthcare Ethics
Ethical dilemmas are commonplace in the healthcare professional scene, where healthcare leaders and professionals are often faced with decision situations that may attract different responses. Consequently, healthcare leaders usually employ various ethical theories from precedence to make decisions that may be overarching on the lives of patients, colleagues, and even in their personal lives. An ethical dilemma case that can be faced by a healthcare professional such as a doctor is whether to inform a patient who has high blood pressure and history of heart problems that he is terminally ill with cancer which is at an advanced stage after the family members implore the doctor not to inform the patient. The ethical dilemmas for the doctor are whether to inform the patient of his terminal illness, which has a possibility of worsening their health condition, or whether to agree with the family members in deceiving the patient of the true nature of their health condition and possibly protect their short-term health condition.
Various ethical theories can be applied by healthcare professionals in this situation. First, the doctor may apply deontology, which is one of the notable modern ethical theories and portends that there are associated consequences for the moral and immoral actions of an individual(McCarthy, 2001). Deontology argues that dynamics, such as telling the truth and integrity, are key in the determination of acceptable ethics is given actions. Deontology theories associated primarily with Immanuel Kant, who posits that the greatest is goodwill, and morally right actions are actions committed with a sense of duty. Thus, according to deontology, the healthcare professional would assume the decision that entails being truthful with the patient. Thus, the doctor would still go ahead and tell the patient of their terminal illnesses by applying deontology as the doctor would not be part of the deception to violate the rights of the patient of knowing the truth about their health. Moreover, using deontology, the doctor would not wish for deception to be made a universal law as he or she may also be denied the truth.
The doctor can also apply utilitarianism. A utilitarian would weigh the available options of whether to tell her or not to tell the patient. Utilitarianism would entail the doctor weighing the positives and negative effects of his decision to tell the patient of their terminal illness and thus provides the best possible decision for the doctor. In the event that the deception which entails being part and having knowledge of the violation of the rights of the patient of knowing the truth poses a high chance of damaging the future success and practice of the doctor, the doctor can employ utilitarian theory to reject being part of the deception. Also, in the event that the deception or by concealing the truth from the patient results in a significant net positive impact such as prevention of premature death from shock, then the doctor should use the utilitarian theory to be part of the deception. The doctor has a duty of fairness and justice to both the family members of the patient and the patient and even greater duty to the ethical guidelines of the profession. Furthermore, if the doctor’s decision to deceive the patients gets public, there is a possibility that his or her reputation and that of other agents involved in the case like the hospital will be damage.
Also, the doctor may employ the virtue theory in this ethical dilemma. Virtue theory entails professional practices of guidance that have no appeal to particular principle or action consequences. Subsequently, when a dilemma of ethics arises, the professional visualize what would be done by a good practitioner in such a scenario; thus, the advantage of virtue is that it forms the basis of moral decisions. Per contra, virtue portends the weakness of conflicting outcomes when team virtue is divergent from individual virtues impacting adversely on team efforts. In addition, virtue ethics keeps frequently changing for areas like respiratory care (Holland, 2015). Still, in line with changing values in virtue ethics, decision making has no specific directions. Virtue is applicable in a health care setting; for instance, when a doctor is weighing the dilemma of whether to truthfully inform a patient on their medical condition in that the virtues of the healthcare professionals involved with the patient may not be in tandem resulting in no single direction of decision even when the doctor decides to either maintain honesty or deception. A good health professional is concerned primarily with ensuring the best welfare of their patient, and in this case, informing the patient of their condition with respect to all the other underlying health issues is not in the best interest of the patient. Also, lying or concealing important information from a patient is not the best practice for a doctor, given that trust and honesty are key patient-practitioner relationships. Thus, the doctor should find a way of ensuring that the patient gets to know of their terminal illhttps://essaygroom.com/utilitarianism-and-deontology-2/ness while at the same time, ensuring that the possibility of shock from the information will be minimal.
References
McCarthy, R. L. (2001). Health care ethics. An Introduction to Health Care Delivery: A Primer for Pharmacists (pp. 179-202). Aspen Publishers, Gaithersburg, Md.
Holland, S. (2015). Public health ethics. John Wiley & Sons.