- BUS FPX 4121 Assessment 5 Ethics and Patient-Centered Care.
Ethics and Patient-Centered Care
The medical center of the United States of America can be described as being in a state of transition from the earlier male-dominant structure to a patient-oriented structure. This change is as a result of the growth of a culture that focuses on the patient’s autonomy over their health given that they have the necessary tools at their disposal and information from technologies such as the Internet (Smith & Jones, 2020).
The development of this model helps in patients’ activation as well as the enhancement of care outcomes, but it raises certain managerial and ethical questions. At present, Brookside Hospital is in the process of adopting patient-centered care as the central model of care delivery, which would involve the consideration of various ethical issues like the autonomy of the patient, the patient’s dignity as well as the patient’s decision-making preferences.
This transformation entails that healthcare leaders organize for and have adequate knowledge of the assessment, analysis, and reporting of outcomes of patients to enhance the general experience of patients. Embedded in these challenges, particularly in the various aspects of patient-centered care such as end-of-life care or death with dignity are that as the new healthcare administrator of the Brookside Hospital, you will be faced with the challenges of administering the hospital under these conditions.
Ethical Dilemmas in Health Care Management
In healthcare management ethical conflicts are based on tensions and choices that are evident in the values, interests, or responsibilities. Such challenges are most apparent in patient-led care where patients are seen as competent agents of their decision-making and are likely to become aware of the organization’s structures and rules as well as the law and policy restraints in healthcare facilities that hinder their ability to empower patients and receive their authorization (Brown & Smith, 2020).
One of the conflicts that can be observed at Brookside Hospital is the internal one concerning the distribution of resources. As the hospital is turning into the patient-centered model, there are going to be more demands for additional resources for patients’ education and patient support services. However, this demand overburdens the hospital’s budget, and while embracing patient-centered care means embracing several principles such as patient involvement in decision-making, the hospital feels the pinch on its budget hence creating tension towards the patient-centered care principles and financial sustainability of the hospital (Johnson, 2019).
Some of the causes are attributed to financial situations, variation of goals in the management, and being able to address patients’ care needs while meeting financial goals. The two broad ethical norms involved in this issue are justice, which addresses equal employment and distribution of resources, and beneficence, which requires putting the patients’ welfare first (Thompson & Garcia, 2021).
BUS FPX 4121 Assessment 5 Ethics and Patient-Centered Care
Another ethical issue relates to patient consent in the hospital: The finalized skiing protocols and compliance with the policies may lead to non-informative or limited understanding of a patient’s conditions and the corresponding treatments. This issue is however slightly complex especially when patients have different cultural understandings as well as different levels of health literacy.
Precisely, ethical conflict emerges if healthcare professionals are to go ahead and treat some patients if the patient cannot consent to the treatment but has not refused it as well (Williams et al., 2020). Such factors are language difficulties, cultural differences, lack of time in emergencies, and institutional rules that could not be sufficient enough to address these issues (Davis, 2021). Autonomy is particularly important here, but here it must be aligned with non-maleficence – the guideline to do no active harm, which clients and diagnosticians weigh in deciding the patient’s therapy.
Ethical Principles
Healthcare management encompasses a broad area of ethical principles and policies that assist leaders in the delivery of ethical choices relating to clinical and organizational issues. Regarding patient-centered care, specific ethical theories include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. These principles apply when dealing with conflicts of interest involving many and diverse persons in healthcare facilities. Two, autonomy encourages the patients’ rights to self-determination of their needs since they are capable of deciding on the most appropriate care to seek.
In the field of healthcare management, this principle directs the choices that aim at obtaining the patient’s consent and participation in treatment processes. For instance, when formulating policies on informed consent, the healthcare manager needs to consider information acquired by the patients, together with factors that would facilitate patients to make decisions that reflect their values (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019).
BUS FPX 4121 Assessment 5 Ethics and Patient-Centered Care
Beneficence entails doing what is best for the patient and advancing his or her well-being to produce the best result. According to this principle, healthcare managers should promote policies and activities that will improve patient care outcomes as well as patient safety. In decision-making, the managers should use in their decision-making the purpose of maximizing the benefit of any action or policy of the healthcare facility to improve the patient’s health and level of satisfaction (Gillon, 2020).
To delegate the care of patient’s well-being and health to healthcare managers, the principle of non-maleficence is significant. It helps the healthcare leaders think through the risks and even the adverse likely to arise from their decision. For example, when it comes to resource allocation, managers have to consider the possible consequences of underinvestment in particular kinds of services about the mishaps that may occur to patient care quality. In practice, this principle entails the consideration of all possible risks and the design of measures to prevent detrimental effects on patients.
External and Internal Factors
These are government policies, accreditation, new technologies, and socioeconomic factors. Laws that have been put in place by federal authorities such as the CMS or HHS set down guidelines on the treatment of patients, the protection of their information, and how payment procedures should be conducted within a particular healthcare organization. Adherence to such rules and regulations is mandatory to prevent legal consequences and for an organization to qualify to partake in any federally funded projects (Gleason & Blanchard, 2020).
Other regulatory organizations such as The Joint Commission lay down rules that steer healthcare management practices by setting certain minimum quality and safety standards that must be met by the organization (Birk, 2019). More specifically, EHRs and telemedicine are additional examples of technologies that influence management practices by providing new instruments for increasing the quality of the services delivered and making the processes involved more effective, yet posing several issues regarding data protection and personnel education (Smith et al., 2021).
They are organizational culture, leadership, financial and personnel resources, and organizational workforce. Organizational culture, which includes values, beliefs, and behavior patterns within an institution regulates how practices in health care are applied. The culture of an organization such as patient focus for instance will dictate management practices aimed at engaging the patient, being understanding of the patient’s situation, and respecting their decision-making authority (McAlearney et al., 2020).
Leadership also has a significant impact; where organizations have many transformational leaders who encourage the workforce to perform better, the quality and innovation of services are enhanced, autocratic leaders on the other hand more so emphasize legal compliance.
Evidence-Based Strategies
The process of using clinical ethics consultation is also considered one of the most reliable and evidenced-based approaches for solving ethical problems in healthcare. In this approach, a group of ethicists, clinicians, and other stakeholders is assembled to critically review the ethical dilemmas, look for solutions, and come up with the most appropriate recommendations based on the benchmarked ethical principles and best practices.
Several studies have indicated that clinical ethics consultations positively affect the quality of care, and patients’ satisfaction, and reduce or discourage working staff disagreements by providing a well-organized procedure in addressing ethical dilemmas (Johnston & Angelos, 2020).
The second strategy is the ethical decision-making model approach for instance the Four-Box Method or the Ethical Decision-Making Framework. These models offer a framework by which to assess the cases because they take into account medical necessity, the patient’s wishes, the potential impact on the client’s quality of life, and other factors.
Thus, by applying critical evaluation of these factors, the healthcare managers are likely to make sound decisions, with the exercising of ethical health of healthcare organization. Clinical applications of different ethical methods such as the Four-Box Method are well documented to help when making ethical concerns such as decisions concerning terminal patients, consent, and the use of resources (Jonsen, Siegler & Winslade, 2019).
Another strategy that is commonly and effectively used in practice, and which is based on scientific evidence, is the concept of professional collaboration and teamwork. Regular ethical dilemmas entailing physicians, nurses, social workers, and legal advisors as members of an extensive team of healthcare professionals protect and preserve various viewpoints from an ethical standpoint.
This is the approach that engages everyone and thus can give a broader perspective when solving the problem as all the possible angles are considered. Reports indicate that the integration of education across disciplines improves ethical decision-making leading to improved patient results and the consistency of the application of ethics across the given cases (Morley et al., 2021).
Personal Moral Integrity Guides Ethical Decision
Business virtues are fundamental to formulating and implementing ethical standards within the health care leadership systems and can also be considered as leaders’ moral standards. Ethical values such as integrity, ethics, and consistency, determine the trust the respect that healthcare leaders need to create to be able to influence change and make the right ethical decisions.
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Guiding Ethical Decision-Making
Ethical personalities guarantee that leaders in the field of medicine take action based on well-developed ethical principles. Individuals who possess sound moral values foster and subscribe to fundamental ethical values like patient self-determination, doing good, avoiding harm, and fairness.
This is demonstrated by having policies on how they run their operations, responding to patients’ needs, acting with integrity, and being as open as possible. For example, in a conflict, such as allocating organs for transplantations, moral integrity will entice a leader to allocate organs fairly to benefit all the patients’ lives in contrast to self-serving reasons (Beauchamp and Childress, 2019).
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Contributing to Effective Leadership
From the case under analysis, it can be concluded that effective leadership in healthcare management implies not only managerial competencies but also ethical and moral values. Self-promising superior conducts earn the trust and confidence of subordinates, patients, and other users of services or users in the organization. This trust is critical because it paves the way for trusting relationships in this manner, people can comfortably voice their ethical concerns within their workplaces (Schaubroeck et al., 2021).
The leader with strong morality also has a better chance of meeting the ethical dilemmas and issues on the ground. It holds them to ethical principles which help create direction in decision-making in cases that may be vague to come up with a decision that will be ethical and support their organization’s culture. This capability is most valuable in conditions that are time-sensitive and perhaps ethically demanding, for instance, while providing care to patients in critical wards and while handling patients’ end-of-life issues (Miller & Schaefer, 2020).
Conclusion
In conclusion, healthcare systems appeared to follow an unchanged road map, however, nowadays, rapidly progressing to a more patient-centered approach, the questions of ethics in the sphere of decision-making and leadership become crucial. When such healthcare organizations as Brookside Hospital are faced with such a challenge, tackling ethical issues becomes crucial in guaranteeing the public that the quality of the healthcare delivery is not compromised while sticking to the key principles of ethical practices.
Ethical issues that arise from internal organizational issues and processes that, final treatment decisions imply just how comprehensive and intricate the decision-making process in health care is. Each scenario poses questions of ethical theory including individuals’ right to self-determination, the principle of doing good, the principle of non-harming, and the principle of fairness, all of which have to be answered while taking cognizance of constraints including legal regimes and organizational cultures, available resources, policies and procedures. Read more about our sample BUS FPX 4121 Assessment 1 for complete information about this class.
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