Ethical and Legal Implications Discussion Paper
Ethical and Legal Implications Discussion Paper
Requirements:
You are a family nurse practitioner working in an outpatient primary care office of a large hospital system. The practice has been operating for over 15 years, and many of the administrative and clinical staff were hired when the practice opened. You have been in the practice for less than 3 months. In that short amount of time, you have witnessed several of the clinical staff engaging in heated arguments with each other, sometimes in patient areas. You overhear an argument occurring today between two staff. You pick up a patient\’s chart and notice a very low blood pressure that the medical assistant failed to notify you about. When you confront the MA, she states that she was going to report the vital signs to you when she became engaged in the heated argument you overheard and forgot to notify you.
Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is not unusual in this practice. Working with staff who cannot cooperate effectively can negatively influence your ability to spend time with patients, can impede the flow of patients through the office, and could impact patient safety.
Case Study Responses:
Analyze the case study for potential issues for members of the healthcare team from office conflict. Contrast the potential effects for each member of the healthcare team based upon the required readings from the week. Discuss the potential ethical and legal implications for each of the following practice members:
Medical assistant
Nurse Practitioner
Medical Director
Practice
What strategies would you implement to prevent further episodes of potentially dangerous patient outcomes?
What leadership qualities would you apply to effect positive change in the practice? Focus on the culture of the practice.
NB. Just answer the questions does have to be APA style or cover sheet.
Ethical and legal implications
Analyze the case study for potential issues for members of the healthcare team from office conflict. Contrast the potential effects for each member of the healthcare team based upon the required readings from the week.
All medical personnel have a duty to act in a manner that is aligned with their professional code of conduct and moral principles. Their duties include doing no harm with the medical benefits outweighing the harms as indicated in the Hippocratic Oath. Providing the wrong information to direct care decisions is likely to harm the patient, and goes against the principle of doing no harm. In addition, medical personnel should act based on the concept of beneficence by always doing the best possible for the patients. Ethical and Legal Implications Discussion Paper The case shows that the personnel do not always do the best for the patient, as is indicated when information was withheld. Besides that, medical personnel should be faithful to reasonable expectations, especially with regards to treating the patients with dignity and respect. The case shows that the medical personnel do not treat the patients with respect as they argue before them and fail to honor the agreement to provide the best possible care (Huff, Kline & Peterson, 2015).
Discuss the potential ethical and legal implications for each of the following practice members:
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Medical assistant
Medical assistants (MAs) have an ethical and legal responsibility to be professionally accountable. This implies acknowledging any mistakes they make and taking steps to address the mistakes. For the present case, this would involve reporting potential errors so that the appropriate adjustments can be made to the delivered health care. As such, the MA should prioritize professional accountability above the workplace conflicts (Huff, Kline & Peterson, 2015).
Nurse practitioner
Nurse practitioners have an ethical and legal obligation to ensure that patients are protected from harm. However, the ongoing conflicts have made this difficult to realize since communication has turned ineffective as personal focus more on their conflicts while ignoring patient care needs (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2014).
Medical Director
The medical director has a legal and ethical obligation to enforce policies through reviewing guidelines while ensuring that the decision-making mechanisms are consistent with the legal and ethical standards of care. In fact, they formulate procedures and policies to guide staff during practice with a focus on creating conducive environments for the patients and personnel. If the procedures and policies are in place, then the director ensures compliance from personnel. The case shows that the medical director has failed in this regard as evidenced by the fact that medical personnel continue to have conflicts that compromise their capacity to provide the best possible care (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2014).
Practice
Providing good medical care while avoiding harm are the foundations of legal and ethical practices. In this case, the practice is expected to avoid conflicts of interest among the personnel. The case shows that the personnel have regular conflicts. In addition, the practice is expected to balance profits with serving the patients to keep operating. The case shows that the provided care falls short of expectations. Besides that, they should ensure equal treatment with a focus on monitoring care delivery and putting policies in place to clarify expectations. The case shows that the medical staff will typically ignore patient information (Milstead & Short, 2019).
What strategies would you implement to prevent further episodes of potentially dangerous patient outcomes?
The primary cause of the potentially dangerous patient outcomes is the workplace conflicts that have limited communication opportunities such that important patient information is available but not transmitted to the right personnel for action. Four strategies can be implemented to address the workplace conflicts. The first strategy is to clarify priorities and ensuring that each personnel has clearly defined roles and responsibilities. The second strategy is to eliminate bias and stereotypes. The third strategy is to engage mediators to proactively address the conflicts. The final strategy is to set guidelines for resolving conflicts. The guideline includes steps to follow when reporting, actions to take, and preventing conflict reoccurrence (Black, 2016).
What leadership qualities would you apply to effect positive change in the practice? Focus on the culture of the practice.
Five leadership qualities can be applied to effect positive change in the practice. The first quality is emotional intelligence to cope with the stressors presenting routine challenges. The second quality is integrity that focuses on making the right choices in terms of legal and ethical expectations so that effective and safe care decisions become an intrinsic part of the practice. The third quality is communication skills that facilitate collaboration. The fourth quality is socialization and respect while winning the respect of patients. The final quality is professionalism that entails acting as a representative of the profession (Black, 2016).
References
Black, B. (2016). Professional nursing-e-book: concepts & challenges. New York, NY: Elsevier Health Sciences.
Huff, R., Kline, M. & Peterson, D. (2015). Health promotion in multicultural populations: a handbook for practitioners and students (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Milstead, J. A. & Short, N. M. (2019). Health policy and politics: a nurse’s guide (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Stanhope, M. & Lancaster, J. (2014). Public health nursing: population-centered health care in the community (8th ed.). Maryland Heights, MO: Elsevier/Mosby. Ethical and Legal Implications Discussion Paper
