Week 3 Discussion

This week, you learned about numerous ethical dilemmas in the healthcare field. These dilemmas are the controversial or “hot button” topics in the medical field today. They range from questions about proper patient care and treatment to scientific improvements in medicine to decisions about life and death.

For this discussion prompt, you will use the St. Martha’s General Hospital Scenario. Choose any scenario, outline the facts from the scenario and how the situation was handled by the St. Martha’s employee or employees. Then, discuss other ways that the situation could have been or should have been handled by a healthcare employee. In this section, make sure to discuss whether a law exists that needs to be followed by the employee. If no law exists, discuss how the employee can determine the answer using ethical theories. Finally, discuss the different viewpoints on the dilemma that could change the answer of how the situation should be handled by an employee. These viewpoints can be beliefs based on law, religion, morals, needs of government or society, social needs, financial repercussions, etc.

Week 3 Discussion Answer

For this discussion connected to the set of scenarios provided during the Week 2 Discussion, I still chose the situation of Rick because this is an example of an ethical dilemma wherein Rick violated a law for his ethical and emotional standpoint. In this scenario, Rick’s father was hospitalized and became bed-ridden, only having few moments wherein he can talk and converse properly, as well as having the fact that he might die soon and only helped with the medication and life support.