What is Ethical Decisions making?
What is Ethical Decisions making?..Ethical Decisions are based on an individuals standard of morality [that is, being capable of distinguishing between good from bad].
Ethical decision making stems from the conscience of a person (Livingstone, 2009). Conscience can be viewed as a path that a person takes in order to find and represent their own personality. As a person advances in years, they encounter many realities and therefore they acquire and consequently develop morality on a higher scale.
The Nursing profession and the medical field generally has over the years been guided by the Hippocratic Oath, where the health practitioners pledge to carry out their duties professionally and observe ethics while dealing with human life.
Therefore, it comes as a surprise when it is advertised in the public domain that the same healthcare practitioners patients trust their lives with behave unethically and as a result cause mass death of unsuspecting patients. Such is the situation in Lucias case where she was accused of mass murder of patients.
This occurrence has been viewed as a case of human reasoning gone completely haywire.Lucias case [even though it does contain discrepancies especially on the evidence used legally] forms a good starting point of investigation on how ethical thinking is important to the medical fraternity.
This paper is not going to dwell much on the legal aspect of the case -as I believe the respective fields will cover that- rather it is going to concern itself with the psychological aspect of ethical decision making especially in the medical field. It will look into the possible ways of enhancing ethical decision making amongst health practitioners especially since the medical field is guided more by ethics as it is by law.
The end point is to understand the rationale behind ethical decision making and how it can be implemented in the health field.Research TopicAs mentioned earlier, the paper is going to look into various questions to try and answer the questions on how ethical decisions can be enhanced in the complex field of health practitioners.
This has been intrigued by the recent happenings in the Lucia case which has gone to prove that ethical decision making is waning in the medical field. The basis of this assumption is that in recent time the world has experienced medical atrocities on a scale never anticipated.
In addition there is a worrying trend of diminishing respect of human life and hence ethics in the medical field as ethics issues are raised in court with the culprit being the health segment of society as can be illustrated in the Sally Clark case that happened few years back in the U.K. With the above in mind, I set up the research topic to be How to re-Instill Ethics Back into the Medical Fraternity.Sources to be usedSince the research will be conducted both in the present time and a reflection of the past sought, the paper will rely mostly on documentary sources. These sources will prove helpful because they will enable the researcher go back through time and look into past situations.
Furthermore, documentary sources have proved important when it comes to discussing historical issues because they act as historical databases for actual events the happened in a particular time. Additionally the use of documentary sources will help in cutting the costs that are associated with field work.
Travelling expenses and accommodation expenses will be avoided as a result. Furthermore, the use of documentary sources saves a lot of time and therefore enabling the research to be completed on time. However, it is appreciated that documentary sources are not exhaustive. Therefore, when circumstances warrantee, primary sources will be used too.To conduct this study, the researcher has chosen among others two documents that will be helpful in the research. The first will be the 8th Edition of the Book Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions by Gerald et al.
This book will be important to the researcher it will help the researcher in discovering a proper guideline that will be important in the discussion of codes of ethics within the professional body of medicine as well as discovering different theoretical positions. In the end the book will help the researcher refine and hence formulate an opinion on how to positively and efficiently help the medical profession have a proper definition of their own in respecting the Hippocraticcode of ethics. The book will be important to the researcher as it will help him be able to understand the role that therapists have in a counseling relationship especially in the medical field. It will help the researcher to also spell out the responsibilities between the professional [the health practitioner] and client [or Patient].
The second documentary source to be used will be a journal titled Caring and Justice: A Study of Two Approaches to Health Care Ethics by Helga Kuhse. This journal is important to the researcher because it has studies that have been conducted on ethical decision making in the health fraternity i.e. between doctors and nurses. The article will help the researcher distinguish between justice perspectives and those of care perspectives.
Additionally this journal will be important to the researcher because it will help the researcher understand the difference between impertialist and partialist moral thinking models. This will be in a bid to understand how both doctors and nurses make ethical decisions and try determining whether there is a difference.
If a difference does not exist, then the researcher will have a single approach to proposing a single way of enhancing morals in the medical field. However if a difference does exist, then the researcher will propose different methods for the different professions.ConclusionIt can be appreciated from the above discussions that the medical field needs a new way of enhancing ethics in their work environment. Therefore it is expected that at the end of the research, the researcher will have found ways of enhancing this changes in the medical field.ReferenceGerald, C., Marrianne, S. C. & Patrick, C. (2010). Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions. (8th Ed). Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.Helga, K. (2012). Caring and Justice: A Study of two Approaches to Health Care Ethics.Centre for Human Bioethics. Monash University. Clayton. Australia.Livingstone, L. (2009). Ethical Decision Making. Lulu.com