Peer Responses

Response to Classmate 2

Hello, great post. I agree that clear and effective communication is the key to better patient outcomes. A healthcare facility with chronic communication breakdown will be headed for poor patient outcomes, un-endless malpractice lawsuits, high employee turnover, and an unbearable environment to work for employees and patients to get healthcare assistance. Poor communication is the leading cause of medical errors (Hicks, 2019), despite most hospitals having systems to prevent errors. This is because physicians and staff nurses fail to document patient care in a precise, accurate, and timely manner. When this kind of communication is lacking, healthcare professionals cannot correctly identify mistakes before adverse medical events occur. Further, when physicians take up autocratic leadership styles over the nurses and other subordinates, information exchange and feedback that could be beneficial to patients may be hindered. This is because autocratic leaders tend to hold information from nurses so as to retain power (Chaudry et al., 2008).

The healthcare system stands on the two principles of beneficence and non-maleficence. Under these two, the system seeks to do all it can to benefit the patient while not causing any harm to the patient. In non-maleficence, the physician makes decisions that bring no harm to the patient or society. However, the current healthcare system has physicians that make decisions that aim at causing no harm to society at the expense of the patient. For example, using human subjects for studies that could benefit society yet harm the patient at an individual level is morally wrong (Walshe & Shortell, 2004). The Bible states that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and should not be involved in any unholiness. When experiments are done on human subjects without their knowledge, it goes against Biblical morals and those of the persons involved.

References

Chaudry, J., Jain, A., McKenzie, S., & Schwartz, R. W. (2008). Physician leadership: the competencies of change. Journal of Surgical Education, 65(3), 213-220.

Hicks, J. (2019).Effects of ineffective communication in medical offices. https://www.verywellhealth.com/side-effects-of-ineffective-communication-2317356

Walshe and Shortell (2004). When things go wrong: how healthcare organizations deal with major failures. https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.23.3.103

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Peer Responses

Discussion Post Responses

Please see Classmate’s 2 post in response to Classmate 1 post. I would like to respond to Classmate 2 . Thank you.

Peer Responses

Classmate 1

In this weeks reading it is clear that there are many different situations where healthcare organization have failed whether that is due to drug tampering, mistreating patients, or committing fraud. Like we reviewed in session 1 this is a part of the accreditation process and where the Joint Commission comes in. “The commission develops performance standards that address crucial elements of operation, such as patient care, medication safety, infection control and consumer rights” (Rouse, 2015). A study conducted by Kieran Walshe and Stephen Shortell details some of the major failues within healthcare organizations. The first common failure within healthcare organizations is that many of the problems happening in healthcare are not being bought to light. They happen for months, years, or even decades before they are actually addressed. For example, “doctors at the National Women’s Hospital in New Zealand left women with cervical cancer untreated to follow the progress of the disease for two decades until the late 1980’s, despite opposition to what they were doing” (Walshe & Shortell, 2004). The second issue is that many times if one or more people know about an issue, they don’t do anything to fix it. In many accounts when ethical situations are brought forward, it is also brought forward that individuals knew but didn’t care to stop it or say anything. In Redding Medical Center in California, physicians were completing mass amounts of unnecessary surgeries and procedures on healthy patients. When the news broke, it became evident that many of the staff knew what was going on. Unfortunately the only people who didn’t know what was actually happening were the patients and their families. Lack of care or attention leads to the third issue and result in patient harm and mistreatment. For example, failures in blood treatment left 30,000 patients in Canada injured and amounted in additional health care costs. These kinds of issues draw bad reputations for health care organizations. If you look at all these issues from a birds eye view, I think what is comes down to is lack of management. The management lacks quality review and control, incident reporting, and performance based management. Circling back around these are all of the kinds of issues that are addressed with the Joint Commission. Lastly, I think issues can come down to integrity and the fact that these healthcare organizations can get away with these kinds of things, then why would they not continue to do so. Morals and integrity come in to this part because how we respond to these situations has a large amount to do with what worldview and lens we are looking a the world.

I definitely think that plaintiff’s should be able to pursue a claim in the case of malpractice of fraudulent info. Individual’s lives are on the line and in some cases like the Quaid twins, lives were lost. If a doctor or a practice has failed to do their job, then I think a person has every right to move forward legally. Negligence is key here, because under negligence laws a person must violate a reasonable standard of care. I do think that there needs to be clear standards and limit put in place however, because malpractice lawsuits happen often and I think that the doctor or clinic may not of necessarily always been at fault. Human error, machine failure, and other factors all come in to play and come sometimes be disguised.

I honestly believe there needs to be the perfect balance between patient care and criminal acts. If an organization puts all their eggs in only one of the two baskets, they are going to miss a huge aspect of a functional and ethical organization. Morally it makes sense to focus on both aspects, because truly we shouldn’t want either area to go unattended.

References

Pozgar, G. (2019). Legal Aspects of Health Care Administration (13th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning

Walshe, K., & Shortell, S. M. (n.d.). When Things Go Wrong: How Health Care Organizations Deal With Major Failures. Retrieved from https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.23.3.103

Rouse, M. (2015, July). What is Joint Commission? – Definition from HealthIT.com. Retrieved from https://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/definition/The-Joint-Commission

Classmate 2 Response to Classmate 1

Health care organizations have been lacking on their moral values with relationship to patient care and job satisfaction. The health care system needs to take a step back a reconsider how they are providing care to others. They also need to look at the storage of the staff. This would help with patient satisfaction. There needs to be a balance of communication between staff and patients to have a positive outcome. Often criminal acts occur because of lack of management with regards to detail of staff. This something that should be addressed more closely in the future. Do you believe that leadership is lacking on communication with staff? If so how and why? From Christian view how do you feel about the moral values being represented in the health care system today?