The Ethical Areas in the Medical Field - Essay Example

"The Ethical Areas in the Medical Field" is a marvelous example of a paper on medical ethics.
Healthcare ethics is the field of ethics whose primary concern is the wide array of ethical decision-making situations which occur in the nursing practice besides the policies and procedures designed to guide such practices. There are many areas in healthcare ethics that result in ethical issues that conflict between ethics and the legal framework governing nursing practice. This paper will discuss three of the ethical areas in the medical field.

Patient Confidentiality

Patient confidentiality is an ethical area that requires a patient's information to be kept private from third parties. A nurse should ensure that any information concerning a patient's health condition is not only kept private but also kept in a secure place where no unauthorized person can access it. Violation of a patient's privacy and confidentiality can have negative impacts on the patients and create mistrust between nurses and patients. Conversely, a mistrust between nurses and patients will definitely lead to poor patient outcomes.

Violation of confidentiality has both ethical and legal consequences. The Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) has laid down guidelines and laws that govern how a patient's information is to be handled. Going against these laws can lead to a court case. Adhering to the laws and upholding ethics sometimes causes many questions in the medical field. What should a nurse do when she learns about a patient's information which can affect a third party? What should a nurse do when violating the laws of confidentiality can save a life? These ethical and legal questions prompt me to explore this area to gain more knowledge on how to solve such problems.

Informed Consent

This ethical area demands that any medical procedure performed on a patient should have his approval. Informed consent means that the patient agreed with the requirements of a certain treatment and agreed to go through it (Committee on Bioethics, 2016). Failure to obtain informed consent from a patient violates both ethical and legal values. Ethical questions may arise when a nurse faces a situation when a patient fails to provide informed consent to a medical procedure which is crucial in his treatment. Should a nurse in such a situation violate informed consent to facilitate quick recovery of the patient?

Informed consent also means that a patient should know the benefits, risks, and other available options pertaining to a particular treatment (Committee on Bioethics, 2016). This may lead to legal questions when a patient provides informed consent to an illegal medical procedure. Should a nurse be held responsible for performing an illegal procedure with the informed consent of a patient? To find the answers to these troubling scenarios, I would like to explore this area to get in-depth knowledge on the issues.

Physician-Assisted Death (PAD)

PAD refers to a situation where a healthcare provider prescribes a lethal medication to a patient who voluntarily accepts to administer the dose to himself (Jansen, Wall & Miller, 2019). This practice is legal in some states and illegal in others. PAD has been gaining more support over the years, but many restrictions are barring it from legalization in the entire country since it can easily be turned into a dangerous weapon. This area causes ethical questions due to its complexity. For example, should a nurse be said to violate the 'do no harm principle if she performs a PAD in a state where the practice legalized?

PAD is mostly performed when the patient outcome is already known. Many cancer patients in their last stages of life experience a lot of pain, yet death is inevitable. Such a situation may lead to PAD saving the patient from suffering before death. Some patients may be badly wound or in a coma and therefore, cannot self-administer the PAD dose. This creates some legal questions. Should a nurse be prosecuted for administering a PAD dose to a patient who is on the verge of death, experiencing extreme pains, and cannot self-administer the PAD dose due to his health condition? The PAD is a sensitive area that has prompted me to explore more into the area so that I can become more conversant with its practice.

Conclusion

Healthcare ethics is a vast field that should be broken down for better understanding. It can be seen that there are some ethical issues that are legal while some legal issues are unethical in the medical field. Therefore, healthcare providers should trend this field keenly to avoid falling on the wrong side.