Question

14. How can strong policies, based on the ethical principles of health care, work to protect health care workers?

Answer 1

Ans) Medical ethics involves examining a specific problem, usually a clinical case, and using values, facts, and logic to decide what the best course of action should be.

- Some ethical problems are fairly straight forward, such as determining right from wrong. But others can also be more perplexing, such as deciding between two "rights"—two values that are in conflict with each other—or deciding between two different value systems, such as the patient's versus the doctor's.

- Doctors may deal with a great variety of perplexing ethical problems even in a small medical practice. Here are some common problems identified in a 2016 Medscape survey, where at least some physicians held different opinions:

Withholding treatment to meet an organization's budget, or because of insurance policies;

• Accepting money from pharmaceutical or device manufacturers;

• Upcoding to get treatment covered;

• Getting romantically involved with a patient or family member;

• Covering up a mistake;

• Reporting an impaired colleague;

• Cherry-picking patients;

• Prescribing a placebo;

• Practicing defensive medicine to avoid malpractice lawsuits;

• Dropping insurers; and

• Breaching patient confidentiality owing to a health risk.

- Professional standards are a way to provide some guidance on ethical problems, but they cannot address every issue, and they may not address troubling nuances, such as reconciling two conflicting values.

° Key Values for Deciding Ethical Issues:
Many professional ethicists recommend using four basic values, or principles, to decide ethical issues:

Autonomy: Patients basically have the right to determine their own healthcare.

Justice: Distributing the benefits and burdens of care across society.

Beneficence: Doing good for the patient.

Nonmalfeasance: Making sure you are not harming the patient.

However, ethical values are not limited to just these four principles. There are other important values to consider, such as truth-telling, transparency, showing respect for patients and families, and showing respect for patients' own values.

- In addition, medical ethics is not just a thought process. It also involves people skills, such as gathering the facts needed to make a decision and presenting your decision in a way that wins over the confidence of all parties.