Question

Student Activity 12-4

Discussion Questions

The following are suggested discussion questions for this CHAPTER 12 Healthcare Ethics -Basics of the U.S. Health Care System (4th Edition)

1. If you were going to develop a code of ethics for this class, what behavior components should be included?

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2. Do you believe in cloning? Do you think humans should be cloned? Defend your answer.

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3. What is your definition of ethics? What do you think are some unethical situations in the healthcare industry?

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4. What is workplace bullying? Have you witnessed this behavior in the workplace? Do you consider this behavior unethical? Defend your answer.

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5. What is voluntary euthanasia? Do you believe there should be national legislation to make it legal in all states? Defend your answer.

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Answer 1

Question 1 :

Ethical action is the result of four psychological subprocesses: the following behaviour components must be included

(1) moral sensitivity (recognition),

(2) moral judgment

(3) moral focus (motivation), and

(4) moral character

Question 2 :

*In bioethics, the ethics of cloning refers to a variety of ethical positions regarding the practice and possibilities of cloning, especially human cloning.

*While many of these views are religious in origin, some of the questions raised by cloning are faced by secular perspectives as well.

*Perspectives on human cloning are theoretical, as human therapeutic and reproductive cloning are not commercially used; animals are currently cloned in laboratories and in livestock production.

*Advocates support the development of therapeutic cloning in order to generate tissues and whole organs to treat patients who otherwise cannot obtain transplants, to avoid the need for immunosuppressive drugs, and to stave off the effects of aging.  

* Opponents of cloning have concerns that technology is not yet developed enough to be safe, and that it could be prone to abuse, either in the form of clones raised as slaves, or leading to the generation of humans from whom organs and tissues would be harvested.  

* There are also ethical objections. Article 11 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights asserts that the reproductive cloning of human beings is contrary to human dignity, that a potential life represented by the embryo is destroyed when embryonic cells are used, and there is a significant likelihood that cloned individuals would be biologically damaged, due to the inherent unreliability of cloning technology.

*Ethicists have speculated on difficulties that might arise in a world where human clones exist.

For example,

Human cloning might change the shape of family structure by complicating the role of parenting within a family of convoluted kinship relations. For example, a female DNA donor would be the clone's genetic twin, rather than mother, complicating the genetic and social relationships between mother and child as well as the relationships between other family members and the clone.

In another example,

there may be expectations that the cloned individuals would act identically to the human from which they were cloned, which could infringe on the right to self-determination

Question 3 :

Medical ethics involves examining a specific problem, usually a clinical case, and using values, facts, and logic to decide what the best course of action should be.

Some ethical problems are fairly straightforward, such as determining right from wrong. But others can also be more perplexing, such as deciding between two "rights"—two values that are in conflict with each other—or deciding between two different value systems, such as the patient's versus the doctor's.

Doctors may deal with a great variety of perplexing ethical problems even in a small medical practice. Here are some common problems identified , where at least some physicians held different opinions  

*Withholding treatment to meet an organization's budget, or because of insurance policies;

*Accepting money from pharmaceutical or device manufacturers;

*Upcoding to get treatment covered;

*Getting romantically involved with a patient or family member;

*Covering up a mistake;

*Reporting an impaired colleague;

*Cherry-picking patients;

*Prescribing a placebo;

*Practicing defensive medicine to avoid malpractice lawsuits;

*Dropping insurers; and

*Breaching patient confidentiality owing to a health risk.

Professional standards are a way to provide some guidance on ethical problems, but they cannot address every issue, and they may not address troubling nuances, such as reconciling two conflicting values

Question 4 :

*Workplace bullying is when one a person or group of people in a workplace single out another person for unreasonable, embarrassing, or intimidating treatment.

*Usually the bully is a person in a position in authority who feels threatened by the victim, but in some cases the bully is a co-worker who is insecure or immature.

The Workplace Bullying Institute provides examples of what is and is not workplace bullying.

Workplace bullying can take many forms:

*Shouting or swearing at an employee or otherwise verbally abusing him or her

*One employee being singled out for unjustified criticism or blame

*An employee being excluded from company activities or having his or her work or contributions purposefully ignored

*Language or actions that embarrass or humiliate an employee

*Practical jokes, especially if they occur repeatedly to the same person

Workplace bullying is also bad for business and can lead to:

*High turnover

*Low productivity

*Lost innovations

*Difficulty hiring quality employees

Unless someone is being bullied because they are a member of a protected class — which is race, sex, disability and those other categories covered by discrimination law — or being bullied in retaliation for whistle-blowing or complaining about ethics violations, they probably fall between the cracks of existing employment protections

Question 5 :

Euthanasia, and in recent time physician-assisted suicide, are inexhaustible topics for reflection and observation of the different aspects of medicine, law, sociology, philosophy, religion and mortality

*Euthanasia, regarded as deprivation of life with compassion, as well as PAS, is complex issues that cause and raise numerous questions.

*A particular problem is breaking euthanasia on ADE and PE, and then their different regulation.

*Morally and ethically, they are equal. In any case, autonomy of the will of the patient should be an essential moment.

*Physicians are divided on this issue, but a group that considers ADE and PAS as ethically unacceptable is a bit more numerous.

However, for the better view of their attitudes we should research on a much wider area.

Ethical considerations :

Ethical issues (Including plagiarism, Informed Consent, misconduct, data fabrication and/or falsification, double publication and/or submission, redundancy, etc) have been completely observed