Week 2 Discussion

This week, you learned that health care is an extremely regulated industry mostly because of the especially vulnerable nature of its customers: the patients. Legislators have created numerous laws to control everything from the process of insurance to how a patient must be treated and what they must be told by medical personnel. Individuals who break these laws can be subject to civil or criminal liability, so it is extremely important that every healthcare worker knows and understands the laws related to his or her job.

For this discussion prompt, you will use the St. Martha’s General Hospital Scenario. After reviewing that scenario and reviewing the laws that you learned this week, please discuss a healthcare law that may have been broken by an employee of St. Martha’s General Hospital. Identify any scenario where the law has been broken. Discuss the major points of the law. Then, analyze the facts of the hypothetical situation against that law to explain how the employee broke the law. Support your ideas with evidence from your readings.

Week 2 Discussion Answer

The scenario of falsified Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) for Rick’s father is an         example of a violation against the Patient Self-Determination Act (1990), which is a law that ensures the right to autonomy of the patient to reject or receive medical treatment. It also includes the autonomy of the patient towards decision-making processes during end-of-life situations, which requires written and signed documents that will prove the decision of the patient (US Legal, 2021)