What is Health Care Ethics?

Ethic separates the good from the bad, and the right from the wrong. It is based on the perception of the public, the society and the traditions of the culture. In the business setting, including the health care field, ethics refer to a set of rules that guide the conducts of the health care professionals. Ethics may or may not be in a written format within an organization, but most organizations have code of ethics to guide the behavior of employees. Professional Ethic is very important to the organization and the society it serves, especially in the health care field due to the nature of the business.

Tragedies and medical mishap had happened numerous times in the history because of the lack of awareness of professional ethics. There are two classifications of ethics, normative and descriptive. Normative ethics is the proper behavior for a given situation, and descriptive ethics is the actual behavior for a given situation (Highfield, n.d.). An ethical dilemma happens when a person or a group has to make a decision between rights or ethical principles when there is conflict between the two.

 Ethical dilemma arises often in the health care setting. Most patients arrive at the hospital without advance directives. If a patient is in a comatose state or in a condition where the patient is not able to make a conscious medical decision, then a dilemma exists. What if a patient’s family wants the hospital to do anything and everything to keep the patient alive, regardless of the physician’s suggestion that it is not in the patient’s best interest? Cases when the authorities and the hospital are not able to locate patients’ family or next of kin are not uncommon especially in areas with a high population of homeless.  All of these situations require professional ethical calls from the health care professionals and the management. 

Efforts had been implemented to reduce and prevent unethical practice by health care providers and organizations. Ethical committee is one of the efforts implemented by a lot of the health care organizations aiming to prevent tragedies in the history from happening again and to help the involved parties to make ethical and reasonable decisions related to health care.

Resource

Highfield, M. (n.d.). Ethical Decision-making & Influencing Factors. California State University

Northridge. Retrieved from http://www.csun.edu/~meh20426/303/6EthicsIntro.pdf