Delivering Ethical Health Care in UAE - Essay Example

Delivering ethical health care in UAE Name: Institution: Date: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Delivering ethical health care in UAE 3 Introduction 3 Ethical issues in relation to healthcare delivery 3 Legal issues related to healthcare delivery 7 Social issues in relation to healthcare delivery 9 Discussion 12 Conclusion 13 References 14 Delivering ethical health care in UAE Introduction In achieving ethical healthcare delivery, most of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hospitals make sure that every staff working within the settings of healthcare is aware and knows that language and culture have a significant impact on the way patients access and react to services of healthcare. This means that culturally useful and sensitive healthcare is significant and vital for quality healthcare delivery for positive outcomes of health. Healthcare delivery in the UAE is going through an essential transition in order to influence the quality of service provided to patients and clients in general. Healthcare delivery is an issue that calls for a number of aspects that need to be considered (Pera & Van, 2005). Without these aspects into consideration, the process of health care delivery may be obstructed. For instance, healthcare professionals in UAE value ethical, legal and social issues in delivering healthcare in UAE. Ethical issues in relation to healthcare delivery In any business, ethical matters are a major concern. However, they are mainly sensitive within the industry of healthcare. Practices that are unethical within the healthcare industry can result to serious and occasionally life-threatening outcomes on individuals (Stringfellow, 2012). In the UAE, ethical healthcare delivery has been a concern given that it is practiced daily. This is because healthcare ethics mirror decent values that are generally considered as suitable by society. Physicians possess a code of ethics from which everyone within the healthcare industry is expected to abide by. Large healthcare schemes and hospitals frequently have a policy of ethics from which every member of the staff is expected to follow in relation to well-being, health, and safety of patients and their kin (Agich, 2007). In delivering ethical healthcare in the UAE, health professionals review ethical standards in health to make sure that human dignity and rights are respected fully. The sector of health has the duty to consider the ethical dimensions of the chief determinants of health (Pera & Van, 2005). These involve and not limited to role of women, economic situation, political system, cultural diversity, changing pattern of illness and demographic changes. UAE has institutionalized health ethics for suitable healthcare delivery. To achieve this, there is development of new, sensitive, consistent indicators and a vigilance scheme to examine inequalities in the system of healthcare, and neglect or abuse of human rights (Great Britian et al. 1996). Healthcare professionals working within the UAE are diverse and mirror a broad range of religious and cultural backgrounds (Great Britian et al. 1996). It is vital that these professionals acknowledge cultural appropriateness like UAE traditions to provide effectual and culturally sensitive services of healthcare to the Emirate population. It is also important that they acknowledge the religious beliefs and values and norms of the Emirate’s population. Additionally, because of the diversity of the Emirate’s residents, there is cultural attributes disparity linking healthcare experts and their clients and client’s kin and necessitates educational interventions to make sure that professionals in healthcare have the capacity to provide culturally effectual care to a patient population that is diverse. Cultural elements of the population are not just restricted to nationality and race but also involve language, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, ethnicity, and disability (Tseng & Streltzer, 2008). Therefore, it is important that healthcare providers in the UAE be culturally sensitive and provide ethically competent healthcare for the people residing within UAE. In delivering ethical healthcare, rights are applicable in regards to independence and communication (Glover, 2009). For instance, UAE medical practitioners have the duty to disclose all the relevant information regarding medical condition, possible treatment and side effects. Then again, the client has a right to refuse or accept such information provided by the physician. The right of the client to autonomy is promoted by the physician’s level of communication skills, and expertise. The important issue here is that the way the physician communicates issues and offers alternative treatments, provides tools for the client to make a choice that is informed. Healthcare professionals need to practice a compulsory and key ethic of confidentiality (Agich, 2007). This ethic is very significant in the field of medicine because of the interaction that exists between the medical provider and the patient, issues discussed are basically private and personal in nature to the client, and hence the need for the client to get the guarantee that their information will remain undisclosed to a third party. However, when this is not followed, the healthcare provider is regarded as unethical. According to Glover (2009), when medical practitioners work in an ethical manner to deliver healthcare to the sick people, it is evident that moral values will be observed. For instance, various hospitals within the UAE employ medical staffs who possess the value of morals and competence in order to achieve a desired goal which is provision of a better healthcare service to all. The people who get access to it, the system of healthcare delivery in UAE is considered one of the best globally. However, regardless of this high standard, there are various issues that mount from the healthcare delivery. For instance, lack of culturally competent staffs to provide morally accepted healthcare to people. According to World Health Organization (2012), ethics in health have been a vital part of the actions of various units of health institutions. Ethics is frequently a terrifying term for professionals of health care, since it is a term that may suggest accusations of doing wrong. However ethical values are a significant part of daily clinical decisions. For many healthcare professionals in the UAE, the healthcare provider’s capacity to identify issues of ethics, and to work to settle them, is a significant part of delivering quality ethical care (Great Britian et al. 1996). Issues of ethics come up for administrators and clinicians in both urban and rural settings. But, access to resources of ethics is frequently restricted in a rural setting. A number of people argue that to raise ethics matters at all, within the setting of health care, is to accuse medical practitioners of being unethical, or in exceptional requirement of ethics remediation (Agich, 2007). Personal values are very significant factors in making consistent moral judgments (Glover, 2009). However, several professionals may need to answer questions related to health care ethics or conflicts with regards to their personal values, which might be different from their professional values. Resolving conflicts of ethics in healthcare, needs the more official method of ethics reasoning. Ethics reasoning means a formal procedure of analyzing the center for moral judgments of uncertainty or ethics conflicts (Pera & Van, 2005). Occasionally in situations of healthcare, the values are in conflict whereby a plan of care is not built until the conflict is settled. That is when it is significant to have a very intentional manner to recognize and settle the ethics matter involved. Ethical guidelines and principles are very significant since they help support reflections on how to behave (Agich, 2007). As observed in various hospitals within the UAE, ethical healthcare practices and the quality healthcare applications are connected but have dissimilar features of healthcare delivery. The practitioner’s personal ethics set the pre-conditions for healthcare that is quality at the micro-level of healthcare provider and the client; the quality of healthcare schemes offers a macro pre-conditions for interactions of healthcare provider and patient. Healthcare provider practices that are moral and ethical are also practices that focus towards high quality. Holistic healthcare need to target to deliver quality services with the same quality target as the ones postulated by the WHO (World Health Organization, 2012), which have as well been adopted by the UAE and other countries within the world. Legal issues related to healthcare delivery Nearly all patient’ encounter entails multiple ethical and legal issues. Providers of healthcare in UAE who are not aware of the ethical and legal laws for dealing with sick people are at a divergent disadvantage (Garwood-Gowers, Tingle & Wheat, 2005). Due to this, knowing the laws helps providers of healthcare offer better care to clients; avoid unnecessary, costly and lawsuits that are time consuming; and avoid embarrassing and expensive disciplinary behaviors that might make them lose their license to practice (Garwood-Gowers, Tingle & Wheat, 2005). Legal issues in healthcare entail the responsibilities and rights of various parties like medical facility, patient, kin, insurers, and medical staff, and are complicated by religious, cultural, and moral beliefs. Presently, the UAE has no inclusive central law concerning complex matters of healthcare delivery. But, patients do have commonly accepted responsibilities and rights. A number of them have been endorsed into government laws and several have been embraced to different degrees on a voluntary ground by various medical organizations in the UAE (Great Britian et al. 1996). Biases within the medical services provision formed by economic self-interest of the provider have been identified and tackled by law and self-regulation of profession. The invasion of activity economics upon the judgment of the physician in the utilization of resources for the needs of a patient presents continuous concerns. Increasingly, the drivers of economy have come to control the way of healthcare delivery in the UAE (Great Britian et al. 1996). As power changes between the organization and the individual provider and as different relations arise between stakeholders within the system of healthcare, fresh questions concerning the fairness of arising balance will certainly come up. In the medical services administration in UAE, law and regulation currently control a lot of professional life (Great Britian et al. 1996). Ethical behavior inevitably calls for lawful behavior, and having the knowledge of applicable law is very fundamental for the recognition of behavior that is ethically acceptable. However, knowledge of the required law without a clear understanding of the fundamental public policy might certainly result to incorrect application of such laws (Pera & Van, 2005). The UAE’s ethical principles are not binding by law; however courts have used ethical responsibilities as the ground for inflicting legal obligations (Great Britian et al. 1996). More so, maintaining client confidentiality is a legal obligation and also an ethical duty. Systems of electronic health information facilitate increased accessibility and transmission to health information. A lot of people turn to the law so as to settle issues of ethics. The law is among the expression of the mutual values within society and communities, and it is essential to respect the law (Garwood-Gowers, Tingle & Wheat, 2005). But although the law has content of ethics, it is a type of minimalist expectation of responsibilities to others. Ethics attempt to inspire the best professional action and the law needs only a vital minimum. For instance, the law would need professionals not to leave patients that they do not want within their practice. Values of ethics would on the other hand require an expert to attempt to work with patients up to a time where it is judged that the client would be served better in the practice of someone else. More so, ambiguity of the law can be seen, and mostly it is not clear what the law really says regarding a particular question (Pera & Van, 2005). Laws can also differ in various jurisdictions. The law is frequently not capable of subtle distinctions in particular circumstances. For instance, the UAE have laws concerning a person who can be locked in an emergency mental health hold and the details of what the process needs (Great Britian et al. 1996). The law mainly does not tackle a lot of issues that are significant in ethics. In the process of making decisions regarding ethics, it is significant to have clear and precise information regarding the relevant laws (Pera & Van, 2005). If a healthcare provider engages attorneys in whichever ethics considerations, clarity of everyone’s role needs to be identified. Social issues in relation to healthcare delivery Access to care is when a person has the capacity to get the required, acceptable, effective, convenient, and affordable services of health within the appropriate manner. Taking into consideration the system of healthcare delivery in the UAE, it would be incorrect to think that everyone has parallel and equal access and use of the healthcare system. Considerable inequalities within status and healthcare exist across different income groups, ethnic groups, and social classes (Gabr, 2000). Because of these inequalities within health status, key challenges are facing the healthcare distribution and delivery among particular groups, if not all, Emiratis. So as to improve the health of the nation and end the inequality in healthcare to susceptible populations, factors like social determinants of health need to be addressed first so as to attain an understanding of the factors that affect a lot of Emiratis and what needs to be done in the fight directed to equality in the UAE’s system of healthcare delivery. Features within social factors influence one another in a particular manner. These social elements majorly affect the populations that are underserved, basically the ethnic and racial minorities, children and women, the uninsured, rural residents, patients with chronic diseases or disabilities, and homeless people (Gabr, 2000). In the UAE, social factors are connected with lower general usage and access of healthcare. Inequality in healthcare access is to some extent a recurring and repeated cycle encompassing every stage of life. Socioeconomic status is linked to well being and health. For instance, people who have better income tend to live in areas that have less exposure to environmental hazards and hence have greater and better access to the system of healthcare (Pera & Van, 2005). With regards to delivering ethical healthcare in the UAE, the issue of inequality should be eliminated so that everyone feels they have a right and better access to quality healthcare which is the country’s goal to achieve good health for its people (Great Britian et al. 1996). A lot of people who experience inequality in healthcare provision feel their rights and dignity is being violated since majority of the medical practitioners do not treat them the way they treat people with high class within the society. Therefore, as UAE healthcare providers it is important to respect everyone’s rights and dignity and treat all people in an equal manner regardless of their status, disability or magnitude of illness. Income and social disparities have also currently been indicated to contribute to inequalities in health (Gabr, 2000). Underinvestment in individual capital, erosion of communal organization, and the outcomes of relative deficiency are methods by which income disparities can result to poorer health results. Discrimination, for instance, is a disparity prevalent in the UAE that has direct outcomes for the health of an individual. Since a lot of the social elements of health care are the fundamental causes of poor health, the need to address them is essential to the enhancement of population health and health inequalities within the UAE. Although community-level and social policy are designed to tackle social inequalities in health, billions of private and public dollars are annually spent to evaluate and improve aspects of the healthcare system delivery in the UAE (Great Britian et al. 1996). Several interventions have been framed for systems of healthcare, providers, and patients so as to enhance the provision of quality healthcare. Communities need to be seen as action centers for progress, development, and change, with community members and key leaders playing an integral role in the planning and managing policies for improvement of health (Pera & Van, 2005). Through mobilization of the community, resource sharing, skill-building, various communities in UAE can be empowered to recognize and satisfy their needs, making them powerful advocates in encouraging and helping the vulnerable populace in and across their community (Great Britian et al. 1996). Discussion Delivering ethical healthcare calls for a set of factors that need to be integrated. For instance, the ethical issue requires respecting the dignity of the patient. Legal issues call for working within the health professional standards in which the practice of confidentiality should be valued. Regarding social issues in delivering ethical healthcare, health workers need to consider the cultural background of the patients they deal with so that their beliefs and norms are not violated. There are various socio-cultural differences on how individuals view their health, and more significantly, how such variations influence the attitude and behavior of people regarding health, sickness, and death (Callaway, 2008). Hence this poses a challenge to healthcare delivery. Cultural values and beliefs are powerful forces against trials to initiate essential changes in the funding and delivery of healthcare; hence enactment of major reforms of health system would call for consensus among Emiratis on fundamental ethics and values. Worldwide forces like emerging communicable diseases, food supplies, and environmental interdependence inflict new challenges to public health for ethical healthcare delivery in the UAE. The healthcare distribution has been a major challenge in provision of ethical healthcare (Callaway, 2008). Healthcare production, allocation, and subsequent utilization need to be viewed as equitable. However, no community has found an equitable method that is perfect to distribute the few economic resources. Actually, any method of distributing resources leaves a number of inequalities. Societies in UAE, therefore, attempt to distribute resources according to a number of guiding standards acceptable to every society (Great Britian et al. 1996). Such rules are commonly ingrained in a nation’s belief and values systems. Research indicates that social determinants of health have a great impact on the way healthcare delivery is being distributed in various countries (Gabr, 2000) and UAE is not exempted. Lifestyle, as one of the social determinant of health will ultimately influence the choice of a person on what health facility he or she may want. This is evidence in social classes within societies whereby people with a good lifestyle seek better medical services because they can afford while low class people in the society wish to have better health services but they cannot afford it. Researchers have also shown their disappointment in the practice of informal medical providers due to their speediness to exploit the poor within the UAE communities. Medical practitioners have traditionally exerted great power in societies, and have considered themselves powerful than other professionals. This has been a great concern in UAE. Since ethics is fundamental to every field of practice, it is important that promotion of standards of professional practice be reviewed and researched again. An extensive discussion in both scientific literature and actual settings is required. This will bring about a frequent and positive dialogue with higher understanding of ethical matters within the national and regional contexts. A process like this might eventually result to the development of improved working solutions and techniques, which will be productive to both providers of healthcare and their patients in UAE. It will also provoke consideration of ethics within the fields of biomedical research, health policy development, and investments for health improvement, particularly in the developing world. Conclusion As discussed above, it is essential for medical practitioners to consider a number of issues so as to facilitate effective practice towards achieving ethical delivery of healthcare. UAE being a culturally diverse country, healthcare providers need to be culturally competent and skilled so as to deliver ethical healthcare. Knowing the rights of the patients and maintaining their dignity during medical practice is very essential towards getting a positive health outcome. Ethics are very essential in every profession, not excluding medicine. Failure to abide by the ethical guidelines of the medical field may lead to one’s denial or withdrawal of license to practice. Legal issues concerning healthcare enable healthcare providers know their stands of arguments when dealing with clients. Social aspects in relation to delivery of ethical healthcare in UAE is about knowing and appreciating the cultural diversity of the people of UAE hence not violating their values and beliefs when dealing with them. References Glover, J. (2009). “Doing” Ethics in Rural Health Care Institutions. Retrieved on 8 June, 2012, from http://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/cfm/resources/ethics/chapter-04.pdf Agich, G. (2007). Health Care Quality Improvement: Ethical and Regulatory Issues. Retrieved on 8 June, 2012, from http://personal.bgsu.edu/~agichg/Articles/HCO-QI.pdf Callaway, M. (2008). The Global Challenge of Healthcare Delivery. Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp 1-7. Gabr, M. (2000). Health Ethics, Equity and Human Dignity. Retrieved on 8 June, 2012, from http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/GabrHealthEthics.pdf Stringfellow, A. (2012). Ethics & Health Care. Retrieved on 8 June, 2012, from http://www.ehow.com/about_4809691_ethics-health-care.html Pera, S. A., & Van, T. S. (2005). Ethics in health care. Lansdowne, South Africa: Juta. World Health Organization. (2012). Ethics and health. Retrieved on 8 June, 2012, from http://www.who.int/ethics/en/ Garwood-Gowers, A., Tingle, J., & Wheat, K. (2005). Contemporary issues in healthcare law and ethics. Edinburgh: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann. 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