Legal Ethics, Patients Rights, and HIV AIDS - Research Paper Example

Legal Ethics, Patients’ Rights, and HIV AIDS Affiliation: Devise a plan to investigate the validity of patients’ claims of denial of services. This plan should include, but not be limited to, establishing mechanisms to address service denial claims, a human resources component, and a review of related policies and procedures. Denying patients services simply because they are HIV positive or have AIDS is not only unethical but inhumane as well. Nurses and other health care professionals are trained to care for all patients regardless of their medical condition and to do so in an impartial and ethical manner showing humane treatment all the time (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). There are different ways that can be used to verify the claims by the HIV/ AIDS patients about being denied services by the health care professionals. The first of this is to use the patients’ testimonies that can be obtained through personal one on one interview with each HIV/ AIDS patient in the health care facility. The interview should be conducted by the hospital’s health care administrator but can be recorded for purposes of verification and legal action if any is to be taken. Confidentiality should be assured until the investigations are over or until the matter is taken to court if need be. Since the patients’ testimonies alone cannot be relied on due to biasness and because it represents only one affected party, the health care professionals should also be interviewed regarding the issue. In order to avoid raising suspicion, data on this matter can be collected through the usual performance review questions but should be worded correctly in order to elicit truthful and unbiased answers. Oral interviews can also be conducted as a last result for verification purposes of the information already collected. If the oral interviews take a lot of time, it can be conducted on only the health care professionals that will have been found to be involved in the denial of services to the HIV/ AIDS patients and this should be recorded for future purposes. The health care administrator with permission from the hospital board can hire the services of a private investigator firm which can then deploy a few people on an undercover mission to observe the treatment of the HIV/ AIDS patients in their wards. The undercover people can also be situated in the cafeteria and staff quarters where the health care professionals get together in between or after their work shifts to unwind and discuss about their day. The investigators can raise the topic about the treatment of HIV/ AIDS patients and then observe the reaction as well as comments made particularly about their treatment and denial of services. The observation from the wards of these particular patients is also another way to verify whether the claims are true of not. Lastly and this is the last resort but it should also get board approval and it depends on whether finds will be available or not is the installation of cameras in the HIV/ AIDS hospital wards. This is a way to get on camera the action when it happens and is solid proof which cannot be denied by the health care workers and will not have any biasness with it. If the installation of the cameras is too costly, the private investigation firm hired can come with their own cameras and do the surveillance themselves. The human resource department should be handed over this evidence from both the patients and the health care staff. There are hospitals as well as health care policies against denial of services to any patient no matter the ground and measures that can be taken. In the nursing code of ethics which should be one of the policies followed in case the denial of services claim is true, nurses and other health care professionals should aim at benevolence and avoid maleficence. Disciplinary actions depending on the severity of the actions should range from suspension to warning, to shifting the staff to another ward and ensuring random rotations on occasional basis should be among the measures taken. The hospital administrator together with the staffs involved should offer personal apologies to the patients and their relatives and hope that none will be pressing any legal charges. The legal department should however be notified just in case charges are pressed and be ready to handle a malpractice lawsuit. Analyze the primary way in which different staffing levels may play pivotal roles in upholding ethical conduct, including treating patients with dignity. Justify your position. Hospital administration The hospital administrator is the highest level of staff and the role should be to investigate the unethical claim cases brought into attention using the plan mentioned above and take legal action according to the hospital policies. The matter of disciplinary action to take should be deliberated together with the hospital’s disciplinary committee or the board of directors before any action is taken which should be conducted in writing (Griffin, 2011). Medical Professionals These are the people interacting with the patients’ one on one and should ensure that they treat all patients regardless of their medical condition with fairness and justice they deserve, maintain confidentiality of their conversations and medical records as well as ensure that they do good and avoid all evil through harming the patient or denying them their rights. In case of any conflicts, they should refer the patient to another health care professional. Administrative staff These handle the financial and medical records of the patients. In handling the medical records, they should maintain confidentiality or what is in those records from the patient’s name to medical condition. In case of any financial issues with the patient, the staff should uphold the ethics of respecting the patient and report the matter to the administration instead of discussing it with others. Subordinate staff These are the people that are just seen but not heard most of the time. They however witness many things during their work from the interaction of patients with their health care providers to the treatment of the patients to the dialogue in the wards. They should maintain confidentiality of what they see or hear unless it breaches the hospital’s policy or ethics in which case they should report to the hospital administrator. Formulate a plan to relate the primary legal ramifications to the professional staff regarding ethical treatment of the hospital’s HIV / AIDS patients. Health care professional staff should all be given refresher course on legal ramifications and ethical conduct of all patients with particular focus on HIV/ AIDS patients. The course can be in a form of seminar with legal professionals and hospital administration in attendance as facilitators and with case studies of health care staff caught breaching the ethical conduct and hospital policies in as far as treatment of patients is concerned. Among the agenda should be the ethical principles with focus on respect of patient, justice and benevolence and non-maleficence as the most important of all the principles (British Medical Association, 2012). The legal team should mention the type of lawsuits that a health care professional is subjected to if they do not treat any patient ethically or according to the hospital policies. Among these lawsuits mentioned should be the malpractice suit for a staff’s obvious mistakes in treating a patient like the denial of service and medicine, delaying treatment of a patient or even abandoning a patient before the patient is fully recovered or has been discharged from the hospital. This is in addition to the civil lawsuits for intentional, unintentional and negligence torts. These encompass confinement or restraint of any patient against his or her will, invading the privacy of a patient like breaching patient-doctor confidentiality by openly discussing a patient’s medical conditions without the sole purpose being consultation or referral, assault or battery during examination or in the course of treatment, committing harm without any regards to the consequences or just failing to provide the necessary care to the patient which is charged as negligence. These legal charges may lead to ramifications such as fines, suspension with or without pay as well as revocation of the practicing license and the worse of all is serving jail term depending on the severity of the lawsuit (Weir, 2011). In order to ensure the staff will not forget what is discussed in the seminar, documents as well as recordings of the seminar should be provided at the end of the seminar to each staff in attendance. The same should be provided to those not in attendances so that no staff will have any excuse to deny knowledge of the subject in discussion. Devise a community relations plan that tout’s the hospital’s unique ways of serving persons with HIV / AIDS, including a focus on de-stigmatizing those afflicted. The plan can involve several strategies the first one being out in simple and clear language on the hospital’s sign post as well as mission statement to notify all community members of the hospital’s impartiality to treatment of HIV/ AIDS patients. There can also be posters all around the hospital with the same message of treating HIV/ AIDS patients similarly to other patients without any form of stigmatization at all. There can also be phone numbers where the HIV/ AIDS patients that are stigmatized can call and report any stigmatization by any health worker. This will require provision of the name or clear physical description of the staff for action to be taken. Complaints made to this number should also have direct connection to the counseling department where de-stigmatization can be done through counseling of the patient. The other measure is to carry out community campaign where some of the hospital administration personnel together with the hospital staff can carry out campaigns to the community members in the communities rather than the hospitals. The campaign can be rounded up to include several initiatives the hospital plans to do to the people in as far as both preventive and curative health is concerned. The main focus and aim of the campaign should however be to be a message to the people with HIV/ AIDS and their relatives that the hospital has put up policies to prevent any mistreatment or denial of services of these patients. This is as an assurance that if these patients are brought to the hospital, they will not be treated any different than other patients and services will not be denied to them. The hospital policies which assure equality in treatment and services offered to all the patients by the health care staff in the hospital as well as a lack of denial of any services to any patient in the hospital regardless of the health condition they are suffering from should be enforced. The enforcement should start with having these policies disseminated not through the word of mouth only to both the patients and staff but through visuals. A large bill board or several of them should be put up in the hospital grounds as a constant reminder of these policies. This is also so that the health care professionals affiliated with the hospital should not say they were not aware of the existence of such policies. It is also for the benefit of the patients who have experienced the stigmatization from the staff. The policies should include a clause about de-stigmatization being offered by the counseling department and for free for any HIV/AIDS victim of stigmatization by the hospital staff (American Psychiatric Association, 2006). References American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Patients with HIV/AIDS. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Pub. American Psychiatric Association. (2006). American Psychiatric Association Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: Compendium 2006. Washington DC: American Psychiatric Pub. British Medical Association. (2012). Medical Ethics Today: The BMAs Handbook of Ethics and Law. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Griffin, D. (2011). Hospitals: What They Are and How They Work. New Jersey: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Weir, M. (2011). Law and Ethics in Complementary Medicine: A Handbook for Practitioners in Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand: Allen & Unwin. Read More