Ethical and Moral Behavior of Working in the Health Professions - Essay Example

?MORAL FOUNDATIONS It seems as if moral conflicts within the medical profession are inevitable. Health professionals deal with matters of great emotional, psychological, and spiritual weight; opinions and attitudes of patients, families, and doctors range from one end of the spectrum to the other. Somehow, health professionals must integrate their views on the patient's treatment with everyone else to provide care that best helps the patient while still abiding by the patient's wishes and requests, and they must do so within a profoundly secular world view. It's easy to see where a moral misstep could be disastrous for any health professional. In order to mitigate these ethical conflicts, health professionals are held to strict codes of conduct and etiquette, as well as general laws about the treatment of patients and the protection of patient rights. However, there are many places where personal beliefs, codes of conduct, and law and policy are in disagreement. Beauchamp and Childress describe two major types of moral dilemmas that occur within the medical profession. The first type of moral dilemma occurs when there exists evidence that a specific action could be considered either right or morally reprehensible, but there isn't enough evidence to make the distinction. Beauchamps and Childress suggested abortion as an example of this type of dilemma; another example would be flag-burning (10). The second type of moral dilemma can arise when there are two possible courses of action for a health care professional. The obligations both have equal moral weight under normal circumstances; however, in emergency situations, a set of obligations that must normally be obeyed can be ignored. The health care professional must choose a single course of action from multiple differing obligations. Because of the equal moral weight of the opinions on the action, whatever choice is used will always seem morally wrong to someone in some way, and seem right to others. (Beauchamp and Childress 10). The second type of moral dilemma given above leads directly to the idea introduced by Beauchamp and Childress that such dilemmas should be examined in order to determine the overriding set of moral actions in a given situation. It is up to the physician to decide the course of action which carries the greater moral weight and dismiss the other. These situations do not require that the physician must perform both actions, because, in many cases, that would be impossible, but they do cause an action that would otherwise be considered morally correct to be set aside. These sorts of conflicts between two sets of moral codes can seem impossible to work out if the relative moral weight of the two arguments is the same (Beauchamp and Childress 11). One reason for moral dilemmas in medical practice is the fact that many medical professionals are often given an exception from what would be considered correct behavior under the common morality. A special standard of morality applies to them which is sometimes in direct conflict with the general rules of morality (Beauchamp and Childress 3, 7). This double standard exists at least in part because medical professionals are professionals in a traditional sense, requiring special training and education in subjects that most of the public never receives. . This disagreement between general morality and special morality could cause the general public to believe that a medical professional is acting unethically for allowing some course of action that the public would not be able to also allow. Secondly, this discrepancy could cause a moral dilemma between a health care professional's private ethical and moral convictions, and the behaviors in his or her professional life that may differ from those private opinions. With regards to differences in moral standards for certain types of professionals, it is not that physicians and other health professionals are outside moral rules, but merely that they are held to standards appropriate for their status, also known as role obligations (Beauchamp and Childress 6) These role obligations and special moral standards bring their own moral dilemmas, however. Conflicts may occur between members of the same profession due to interpretation of the standards, between members of different professions or organizations due to different standards. Conflict could also occur internally between a member's professional standards and that member's commitment to other professional standards and that profession's special morality rules. Additionally, issues may arise due to over-simplification, vagueness, incompleteness, or rigidity of the code of conduct (Beauchamp and Childress 6). If a member of the health care profession exclusively uses the professional code of conduct to determine his or her behavior, he or she may wrongly assume that all possible moral requirements in the situation have been met, without consideration to moral standards outside of or omitted by the professional code of conduct (Beauchamp and Childress 7). These codes are not intended to prevent any and all moral dilemmas but merely to provide health care professionals with a framework on which to build their ethical decision-making process. Another reason for moral dilemmas in the health profession comes from conflict with public policy and legislation. Generally, policies expand upon and detail professional codes of conduct, and therefore will mostly agree with those standards. The conflict is with the confusion between a personal opinion of acceptably moral behavior and an acceptably moral policy about that behavior (Beauchamp and Childress 9). As noted by Beauchamp and Childress, voluntary euthanasia may seem to an individual like the ethical path to follow, but the difficulty of making an ethical policy that will not be abused means it remains illegal (9). For example, a health professional who holds the personal viewpoint that voluntary euthanasia for terminal patients should be permitted is still obligated by the law not to offer euthanasia to his or her patients. This may cause a moral dilemma for the health professional, as they must decide between obeying the law or doing what they think is right for the patient, which in this case are two mutually exclusive options. The act of euthanasia may be morally correct, but a policy would not be (Beauchamp and Childress 9). One area of moral dilemma comes from the medical doctrines of “doing no harm” or malfeasance and actively promoting patient interest, or beneficence (Beauchamps and Childress 9, 20). A physician or other health care worker has a moral obligation to patients' needs above all else. However, the obligation of the health care professional to “put their patients' interests first” (Beauchamps and Childress 16), also known as the patient-priority rule, does not negate the obligation of the physician to act honestly in his or her business dealings. A physician's obligation to the truth remains in force, even if the only way to ensure the patient is treated would be to lie about or exaggerate the condition on the documents for the patient's insurance company (Beauchamps and Childress 17). The ethical nature of this dilemma between patient-priority and integrity does not seem to cause medical professionals undue stress. Nearly all medical professionals will place their duty to their patient over their duty to the patient's insurance company. An ethics study by Dennis Novak was performed on a sample set of doctors to determine their feelings about the moral dilemma between patient priority and obligations to the patient's insurance company. Seventy percent of the doctors surveyed responded that they would falsify documentation to get a patient approved for a treatment, and eight-five percent of those physicians did not even feel that this was dishonest (Beauchamps and Childress 16). Beauchamp and Childress suggest that the physicians who falsified the forms, and then denied the deceptiveness of this act, may have been operating under a moral code of conduct that each individual designed (17). Ethical and moral behavior is one of the most important parts of working in the health professions. Without ethical standards, patients and professionals would be unable to trust each other, resulting in a decline in the quality of medical care. Moral dilemmas, whether they are about a single indeterminate action or a choice between two possible courses of action, are a part of health care work that will never be resolved. Conflicts occur because of professional standards, public law and legislation, personal beliefs, and varying business practices, and reach into every part of the field. REFERENCES Beauchamp, Tom, and James Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 6th ed. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print. Read More