The Need for Moral and Ethical Development Among Healthcare Workers
Abstract
Ethical principles in health are important since they help address healthcare dilemmas. Ethical principles prevent legal liabilities for healthcare workers and improve the quality of care given to patients. The main ethical principles in healthcare include beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, autonomy, veracity, and role fidelity. Observing the principle reduces ethical dilemmas and increases the quality of work. The three principles of ethical reasoning and decision-making, such as contemporary consequence-oriented principles, duty-oriented principles, and virtue ethics reasoning, should be used to make the right decisions for the best outcomes. Needs and value-based theories and ethical behavior also help address healthcare dilemmas where employees are motivated and also encouraged to make moral decisions using logical thoughts. Hire our assignment writing services in case your assignment is devastating you. We offer assignment help with high professionalism. .
Day One: Basic Principles of Ethics to Address Healthcare Dilemma
Various healthcare dilemmas occur, which lead to legal lawsuits. Healthcare organizations should come up with strategies to deal with healthcare dilemmas. Basic principles in healthcare that can be used to address healthcare dilemmas include beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, autonomy, veracity, and role fidelity. Beneficence in health care refers to the act of doing good to patients. Healthcare organizations should do good to patients by ensuring their employees demonstrate kindness, charity, and mercy to patients (AbuAbah et al., 2019). Nonmaleficence means that the healthcare professional should not do any harm to the patient visiting the healthcare. Doing no harm to patients is one of the moral principles that incorporate other morals such as not killing, not offending, and not causing suffering to the patients. Therefore, the healthcare organization should ensure that its employees do not cause any harm to the patients, such as killing or causing suffering. The ethical principle of justice is concerned with fairness and equity when providing medical services to patients in the facility (AbuAbah, et al., 2019). Healthcare workers in the facility should be fair to all patients and avoid any form of discrimination, such as racism or gender discrimination.
Autonomy in healthcare refers to the right of patients who are adults in the healthcare facility to make informed decisions regarding their health care. Medical professionals should provide important information to patients to help them make decisions, but they should not make the decisions for the patient (Rainer, Schneider & Lorenz, 2018). Veracity as an ethical principle in healthcare refers to healthcare professionals in the healthcare facility being honest or speaking the truth. Medical professionals should tell patients the truth concerning their medical conditions using evidence-based practice (AbuAbah, et al., 2019). Honesty creates trust and improves the relationship between patients and healthcare providers. Subsequently, the other ethical principle in the healthcare role is fidelity, where healthcare professionals should be faithful. Healthcare professionals should keep the promises they make in order to provide quality and competent care to patients.
Day one: Importance of these basic ethical principles to employees in the workplace
Ethical principles are of great importance to employees at the workplace. Ethical principles help employees stick to healthcare policies, rules, and regulations. Most of the policies, rules, and regulations for providing healthcare services to patients are developed using ethical principles. The scope of practice of healthcare workers is also developed based on ethical principles, which are the expected morals (AbuAbah, et al., 2019). Observing these principles while at work makes the employees stick to their scope of practice, which makes them adhere to the healthcare policies, rules, and regulations. Therefore, employees avoid legal liabilities when they practice using ethical principles (AbuAbah, et al., 2019). Observing ethical principles at work also increases the quality of care to patients, which is the main goal of healthcare workers.
Day Two: Three principles of ethical reasoning and decision making
The ethical principles of ethical reasoning and decision-making can be used to address ethical dilemmas in healthcare. The three principles of ethical reasoning and decision-making include the Contemporary consequence-oriented principles, the duty-oriented principles, and the virtue ethics reasoning. In contemporary consequence-oriented principles, healthcare professionals should make decisions based on the expected results of the decisions (Grote & Berens, 2020). Healthcare professionals should make decisions with the best outcomes for the patients and the general population. Using contemporary consequence-oriented principles will lead to the best-desired outcome for the healthcare facility, addressing ethical dilemmas.
Duty-oriented principles state that the rightness or wrongness of an action done in the health care facility during the provision of care depends on its intrinsic nature and not the outcome of the act. When caring for the patient, healthcare organizations should use the circumstances surrounding the patient to make the best decision for the best outcomes and not use external factors to make decisions. When caring for patients who are at great risk during an emergency, employees in the hospital can ignore some healthcare rules, such as time to save the patient’s life (Grote & Berens, 2020). The other principle is the virtue of ethical reasoning, which expects healthcare workers to use moral values to make decisions. Moral values always lead to the right decisions, and therefore, when used by employees to make decisions, the right healthcare decisions are made in the healthcare facility. The healthcare facility should employ morally upright workers such as religious people who observe moral standards.
Day three: Needs and value-based theories and ethical behavior
Needs-based theories are based on the concept that achieving certain needs based on the hierarchy of needs motivates the actions of people. The needs of employees based on the hierarchy in the organization include physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization (Falivena & Palozzi, 2020). The organization should help the employee achieve their needs, especially those at the base, such as physiological and safety, which will motivate them to provide the best services to patients (Falivena & Palozzi, 2020). The value-based principles, on the other hand, involve the stage of moral development. Employees in the organization are adults at the concrete operational stage, and therefore, they are expected to use logical thoughts to make decisions. Accordingly, making better moral decisions will address the dilemmas in healthcare.
Day three: Questions
There are various ways of ensuring that employees are on the same page regarding responses to ethical issues. One of the ways is the incorporation of ethical principles into the organization’s culture. The other way is developing an ethical and ethics management board that will deal with ethical issues in the organization. The organization’s policies, rules, and regulations should be developed based on the ethical principles in healthcare. Regular training and education of healthcare workers in the organization remind them of ethical principles.
Conclusion
The main ethical principles in healthcare include beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, autonomy, veracity, and role fidelity. Ethical principles help address healthcare dilemmas and prevent legal liabilities for healthcare workers. Ethical reasoning and decision-making principles such as contemporary consequence-oriented principles, duty-oriented principles, and virtue ethics reasoning should be used in making the right decisions for the best outcomes. Needs, value-based theories, and ethical behavior also help address healthcare dilemmas where employees are motivated and encouraged to make moral decisions using logical thoughts. The principles should be part of the organization’s culture to ensure that employees are on the same page regarding responses to ethical issues.
References
AbuAbah, F., Alwan, A., Al-Jahdali, Y., Al Shaikh, A., Alharbi, A., & Hamdan, A. J. (2019). Common medical ethical issues faced by healthcare professionals in KSA. Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences, 14(5), 412-417.
Grote, T., & Berens, P. (2020). On the ethics of algorithmic decision-making in healthcare. Journal of medical ethics, 46(3), 205-211.
Falivena, C., & Palozzi, G. (2020). Value-based healthcare paradigm for healthcare sustainability. In Accountability, ethics and sustainability of organizations (pp. 133-153). Springer, Cham.
Rainer, J., Schneider, J. K., & Lorenz, R. A. (2018). Ethical dilemmas in nursing: An integrative review. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(19-20), 3446-3461.
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Question 
The Need for Moral and Ethical Development Among Healthcare Workers
Read the course scenario and consider the overall moral and ethical failures of the healthcare staff at St. Michael’s Medical Center. In particular, pay close attention to the cases highlighted in the scenario. You are now hired as the new chief executive officer (CEO) with risk management background. You have decided that the best way to handle this task is to first build up the moral and ethical foundation of your employees relative to the workplace environment. You are aware that employees have different moral and ethical values, but your intention is to have them develop the proper professional ethical behavior in the workplace.
In your notes, please address the following items:
Day 1
- The basic principles of ethics to address healthcare dilemma
- The importance of these basic principles of healthcare ethics to employees in the workplace
Day 2
- The use of the following three principles of ethical reasoning and decision making to address healthcare dilemmas:
- Contemporary consequence-oriented principles
- Duty-oriented principles
- Virtue ethics reasoning
Day 3
- Compare the needs- and value-based theories and the role played in developing and shaping ethical behavior in individuals in a hospital
- (Short exercise) Use the scenario to answer this question: How do you ensure that your employees are on the same page regarding responses to ethical issues on the job?
The Need for Moral and Ethical Development Among Healthcare Workers
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