Successful leaders demonstrate the following leadership qualities in their personal and professional lives: they are self-aware and prioritize personal development; they focus on developing others; they encourage strategic thinking, innovation, and action; and they are ethical and civic-minded. I learned a lot about leadership when I took a leadership position a few months ago. By clearly structuring my team, finding the strengths of all team members, and delegating tasks, we were able to bring the projects to success. Leading by example got me the best results with the teams that I worked with. Whenever a new project started, I demonstrated leadership by taking the needed actions to kick the project off and demonstrating what must be done. I made sure that I organized the team in such a way that everybody was on the same page. This way, everybody understands their responsibilities to contribute to the project equally.
truthfulness, confidentiality and fidelity (Rodriguez, 2009). It is necessary to carefully consider the provider’s responsibility to the patient as well as the ethical duty expected by the profession. Beyond justice, the provider has a duty to respect the person, therefore allowing for autonomy as well as being truthful; beneficence, acting in a way that lends comfort, care and possible cure to the patient; and non-malfeasance, meaning that there is no harm caused.
The above mentioned scenario offers an ethical dilemma that may appear to be conflicting. It is the provider’s duty to be truthful, but also to cause no harm. In the event that the provider is truthful, harm, even death, is possible.
If the provider tells the patient that her children are dead, given the current situation, the patient may die due to the additional emotional trauma. In this manner, by telling the patient that the children have died, the provider would be causing harm; risking the patient’s death due to this additional emotional trauma would be medically contraindicated.
However, if the provider does not inform the patient of the news, then the provider is not being fully truthful and respectful of the patient. Under absolutely no circumstances should the provider lie to the patient; saying that the children are fine or any other statement simply to offer comfort. Such a lie would constitute a breach of ethical standards as it is not truthful and may cause greater long-term damage when the woman learns of their death. Lying to the patient is inadvisable and may lead to civil litigation since it would be outside of the professional ethical norms.
Under the guidelines of therapeutic privilege, a provider may not disclose information if such knowledge is dangerous, causing such significant emotional trauma as to be medically contraindicated. In this scenario, one may consider the immediate disclosure to be a matter of therapeutic privilege because the emotional trauma resulting from the information would cause significant emotional trauma possibly resulting in death. Given the likelihood of significant danger at the current time, the provider should not answer the question, but also not offer any false hope or lies. Additionally, autonomy is contingent on rationality; in the patient’s current condition of shock and significant physical trauma, she does not qualify for complete autonomy.
One appropriate response may be to redirect the patient’s focus to her own injuries and treatment, for example: “Ms. Doe, we are doing everything possible to help you right now. We need to ask you some questions about your medical history.” As the patient is not consistently lucid, this redirection would offer additional time to stabilize her condition before adding the additional emotional burden of her children’s death.
