Ethics and Healthcare

Ethical Concepts on How to Improve Health Care
Legal/ Ethical Issues in Healthcare
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Legal/ Ethical Issues in Healthcare
Efforts to improve healthcare quality are never-ending, especially because the healthcare industry faces new challenges daily, ranging from emerging diseases to chronic conditions. However, focusing on specific areas could improve healthcare and enhance positive patient outcomes. This paper will explore some of the ethical issues that play/can play a crucial role in improving healthcare and patient care quality. Complexities characterize the healthcare industry and as revealed by Albert, Younas, and Sana (2020), addressing these complexities often requires moral and ethical practice. Healthcare professionals constantly face ethical dilemmas in their interactions with patients, families, and amongst themselves. It is imperative to look at some of the ethical issues that healthcare professionals experience to gain a deeper insight into improving healthcare. Once light sheds on these ethical issues, it will be easier for nurses and other healthcare professionals to become ethically competent to handle healthcare complexities and improve healthcare delivery. The specific objectives of this paper are:
* To identify and explore five ethical issues that can influence the improvement of healthcare. These ethical issues are: (1) End of life care; (2) Futile treatment; (3) Rationing of nursing care; (4) Breach of patient confidentiality; (5) Genetic Counseling;
* To discuss how each of the ethical issues influences nursing practice, the quality of patient outcome, and healthcare institutions in general;
* To create a policy proposal that can be integrated into nursing practice to improve the quality of patient care and outcomes while enabling healthcare institutions to be better; and
* To provide a roadmap on how nurses can integrate the proposed policy into practice to deliver the policy's intended consequences.
Impact of the Ethical Issues on Nursing Practice, Healthcare Institutions, and Patients Outcomes
* End of Life Care
End of life care entails caring for terminally-ill patients who are in the last 12 months of their life (Young, Froggatt, & Brearley, 2017). Providing this kind of care can be quite taxing on nurses. One of the ethical principles that nurses have to maintain when dealing with end of life patients is the principle of fidelity. This principle requires nurses to keep their commitment to providing quality care to patients regardless of the situation. Nurses providing end of life care experience moral distress because they see their patients suffering and have limited resources to cater to patients (Young, Froggatt, & Brearley, 2017). Also, in the course of experiencing moral distress, nursing practice is negatively influenced because nurses' ability to provide quality patient care may be hindered. As such, addressing the issues presented at the end of life care can be a great step towards improving healthcare. Specifically, it would improve nursing practice and allow healthcare institutions to thrive. According to Young, Froggatt, and Brearley (2017), when the end of life issues that cause moral distress among nurses .ar...