Ethical Case Studies media piece
Whether you are a nurse, a public health professional, a health care administrator, or in another role in the health care field, you must base your decisions on a set of ethical principles and values. Your decisions must be fair, equitable, and defensible. Each discipline has established a professional code of ethics to guide ethical behavior. In this assessment, you will practice working through an ethical dilemma as described in a case study. Your practice will help you develop a method for formulating ethical decisions.
Instructions
Note: The requirements outlined below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. At a minimum, be sure to address each point. In addition, you are encouraged to review the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed.
For this assessment, develop a solution to a specific ethical dilemma faced by a health care professional. In your assessment:
1. Access the Ethical Case Studies media piece to review the case studies you will be using for this assessment.
o Select the case most closely related to your area of interest and use it to complete the assessment.
Note: The case study may not supply all of the information you need. In such cases, you should consider a variety of possibilities and infer potential conclusions. However, please be sure to identify any assumptions or speculations you make.
o Include the selected case study in your reference list, using proper APA style and format. Refer to the Evidence and APA section of the Writing Center for guidance.
2. Summarize the facts in a case study and use the three components of an ethical decision-making model to analyze an ethical problem or issue and the factors that contributed to it.
o Identify which case study you selected and briefly summarize the facts surrounding it. Identify the problem or issue that presents an ethical dilemma or challenge and describe that dilemma or challenge.
o Identify who is involved or affected by the ethical problem or issue.
o Access the Ethical Decision-Making Model media piece and use the three components of the ethical decision-making model (moral awareness, moral judgment, and ethical behavior) to analyze the ethical issues.
Apply the three components outlined in the Ethical Decision-Making Model media.
o Analyze the factors that contributed to the ethical problem or issue identified in the case study.
Describe the factors that contributed to the problem or issue and explain how they contributed.
3. Apply academic peer-reviewed journal articles relevant to an ethical problem or issue as evidence to support an analysis of the case.
o In addition to the readings provided, use the Capella library to locate at least one academic peer-reviewed journal article relevant to the problem or issue that you can use to support your analysis of the situation
Sample Solution
Case Study:
A nurse is working in a hospital when she is asked to help with an experimental treatment for a patient. The treatment is not yet FDA-approved, but the patient is dying and the family is desperate. The nurse is hesitant to participate in the treatment because she is not sure if it is safe or effective.
Ethical Principles:
The nurse is faced with a number of ethical principles in this case. These include:
- Beneficence: The duty to do good and to promote the well-being of others.
- Nonmaleficence: The duty to do no harm.
- Autonomy: The right of individuals to make their own decisions about their care.
- Justice: The fair and equitable distribution of resources.
- The patient's age, health condition, and prognosis.
- The patient's wishes and the wishes of the family.
- The risks and benefits of the experimental treatment.
- The availability of other treatment options.
- The legal implications of participating in the experimental treatment.