Current ethical issues
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The Patton-Fuller Community Hospital has served for 35 years but lacks an ethics program, unlike most hospitals. It has sections on its website covering various departments but lacks a clear overall mission statement. There have been incidents of nurses giving the wrong medications or blood transfusions to patients resulting in harm, but these were only documented in employee files, not formally addressed. An ethics committee should be established to educate staff, review policies, handle ethics cases, and meet with management to prevent future issues. The hospital also drafted an ethics statement committing to patient confidentiality, protecting infectious patients, being honest with patients, and focusing on local healthcare needs over profits or unnecessary treatments.
Current ethical issues
- 1. 1 Current Ethical Issues Wendy Lile XMGT216 University of Phoenix Due March 18, 2012 Allan Bardos
- 2. 2 Current Ethical Issues The Patton-Fuller community Hospital was established in 1975, and after 35 years of service, does not have an ethics program. Most hospitals have a whole ethics committee because patient confidentiality is so important in the medical field. On their website they have sections describing information technology, human resources, facilities, and corporate officers. Their human resources department has a long mission statement that describes their hiring, termination, and working practices but there is not really a mission statement for the whole company except for the small paragraph on the front page. At Patton-Fuller Community Hospital, we treat the most important health concerns - yours. We provide healthcare services designed to meet your needs at every stage of your life. Patient care is our most important job. We want to make sure your experience is as pleasant as possible. (University of Phoenix, 2012) The hospital seems like it is on the right track, it just needs an ethics committee and to be careful when hiring its nurses. There have been numerous counseling’s and write-ups on tardiness and even quite a few on nurses confusing the patients and giving them the wrong medicine. One patient was in severe pain because a nurse gave his pain medicine to the wrong patient and instead of giving the correct patient the medicine when they found out, they waited until it was time for his next dose so that they did not waste a dose on the patient that was not supposed to have it. One of the employees even ordered and gave a patient the wrong type of blood during a transfusion and the patient went into shock and had to be sent to intensive care. There was not a write up for these two incidents only “incident reports” that were put into their employee files.
- 3. 3 First of all, an ethics committee must be established inside the hospital itself. The functions of this ethics committee include education to start. Education should include the committee itself keeping up to date with ethical practices and teaching all hospital staff of ethical practices. The second area of the ethics committee should be to include specific case management. Whenever a problem arises, it should be brought before the ethics committee so that actions can be discussed before carried out. The third aspect should be policy review, revise, and development. When established, the first thing the ethics committee should do is to review the policies already in place and revise them if necessary; then develop new policies fitting for the hospital. Next, there should be quarterly meetings with management staff to review current problems and to educate them on how they can make sure these problems do not arise again. (Gillette, 2002) Patton-Fuller Community Hospital Ethics Statement One of the most important aspects of hospital administration is patient confidentiality, we promise to exercise confidentiality to protect patient information and personal conversations between doctor and patient. Medical records will be protected and sealed if not being used. PFCH will do their utmost to protect themselves and surrounding patients from the transmission of communicable diseases and pathogens, but in the same aspect, not make the infectious patient feel uncomfortable. Although profit-making is a large part of every business, we will not make it known with aggressive commercials. Making patient’s lives better and keeping people healthy are what we will strive for the most. We will not recommend any services that the patient does not absolutely need. We will always be honest and upfront with our patients regarding their welfare and treatments. We have shifted our healthcare research to developing countries so that there is less investment and more focus on our patients that need help now in the hospital.
- 4. 4 References Gillette, Michael. (2002). Functions of an Ethics Program: An Introduction into Doing Medical Ethics. Article retrieved from http://www.bsvinc.com/ethics_function.htm. University of Phoenix. (2012). Website retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/cist/vop/Healthcare/PFCH/index.asp.