Five Top Ethical Issues in Healthcare. By Jennifer Larson, contributor March 6, 2013 - When members of Congress and the president recently failed to come to terms that would avoid the sequester, many people expressed concern over how the resulting budget cuts will affect medical research and other aspects of healthcare.
Some questioned the ethics of an action that could have such a potentially devastating effect on healthcare in the future. But ethical issues in healthcare are common. Nearly every decision that’s made has ethical implications--for patients, for providers and for healthcare leaders. Which issues impact hospital administrators and clinical leaders the most?
1. WHEN DISASTERS STRIKE. Hcam summary on medical ethics. Jury awards widow $6.7 million in medical malpractice lawsuit — Bangor. BANGOR, Maine — A Penobscot County jury Monday afternoon awarded a widow more than $6.7 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against Eastern Maine Medical Center and Dr.
Lawrence Nelson, a Bangor surgeon, according to court documents. The lawsuit was filed in Penobscot County on Aug. 28, 2009, by Paula Braley, 49, of Lee over the death of her husband, Thomas Braley Sr., at EMMC on May 8, 2005 — his 44th birthday and Mother’s Day. Braley Sr. was flown by LifeFlight to the hospital on May 6, 2005 after an ATV accident. The jury found that Eastern Maine Medical Center, its doctors and nurses, and Dr. Nelson were negligent in the death of Braley Sr. after a six-day trial at the Penobscot Judicial Center. Gaps in medical research ethics. President Obama apologized last week for medical experiments funded with U.S. taxpayer money during the 1940s in which American scientists infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases without their consent.
Today these studies would be illegal. Even so, the current U.S. regulations governing research review are full of gaps. The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues will now convene a panel of global experts to examine U.S. research rules. Mercy killings, suicide: 'Social challenges' to be faced as U.S. ages. Murder or mercy killing?
One story that dominated headlines this week raised that question in a particularly dramatic fashion: An Ohio man is accused of shooting to death his ailing wife of 45 years, possibly as part of a "death pact" promise to prevent her from suffering. PHG Foundation - Interactive Tutorial: Moral Theories - Principles of Bioethics.
Issues Involving Medical Negligence. Medical negligence occurs when a medical practitioner is negligent in treating a patient or when he fails to take proper action on a patient’s medical condition.
Medical negligence is a valid cause for a medical malpractice claim. The following acts may constitute medical malpractice: • Failure to diagnose or evaluate• Misdiagnose of a disease or medical condition• Failure to provide proper treatment• Unreasonable delay in treatment of an illness or condition • When a client does not give informed consent to a medical procedure Claims resulting from medical negligence may vary. Here are common types of medical negligence claims: • Birth Injury Claims – This is the most common type of medical negligence claim which includes complications ranging from injuries to the baby, infant death, cerebral palsy or brachial plexus injury. Levinson, W..pdf. Colorado jury awards record $15M in medical malpractice case - Denver Business Journal. A jury in Colorado Springs has returned a verdict of $15 million in a medical malpractice case filed against Memorial Health System and a local doctor.
It’s the largest medical malpractice verdict on record in Colorado, according to Jury Verdict Reporter of Colorado, which has records of federal and district cases in the state going back to the mid-1980s. Denver attorney David S. Medical Ethics and Professionalism. Ethics and Professionalism ACP is devoted to policy development and implementation on issues related to medical ethics and professionalism, and is a resource for ACP members and the public.
Learn More ACP Ethics Manual, Sixth Edition The ACP Ethics Manual is intended to guide physicians in making ethical decisions in clinical practice, teaching and medical research. Pregnant woman's involuntary hospitalization raises legal, ethical, medical questions. The case of a pregnant Florida woman hospitalized against her will is raising a legal, ethical and medical storm around this issue: Can a doctor's order to quit smoking and rest in bed trump a woman's right to control her own body?
In a Tallahassee court ruling, the answer was yes. Now under appeal, the highly unusual case is attracting widespread attention months after the baby in question was delivered stillborn by caesarean section. Samantha Burton, the mother, is appealing the judge's order that forced her to stay at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. Medical Liability Reform. To preserve patients' access to care and help reduce health care costs, the AMA will continue to lead an aggressive, multi-year campaign to reduce medical liability premiums and to fix the broken medical liability system for both patients and physicians: At the federal level, the AMA is urging Congress to pass MICRA-like reforms, including a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages, and providing funding for state-based pilot programs to develop promising alternative reforms, such as health courts, administrative determination of compensation, early offers, and safe harbors for the practice of evidence-based medicine.At the state level, the AMA is collaborating with state medical associations to pursue traditional medical liability reforms, as well as assisting states as they investigate and implement promising alternative reforms.
Malpractice Immunity for Volunteer Physicians in Public Health Emergencies. Avoidability: An alternative standard for medical liability. By S.
Jay Jayasankar, MD Will adopting a different standard help? Medical liability systems aim to compensate the injured, deter and/or prevent recurrence of the error, and deliver corrective justice. Negligence, the U.S. standard for liability, is established through an adversarial litigation system that is costly and emotionally demanding to all, takes an average of 5 years for resolution, and achieves these aims poorly.
Tort reform—especially limits on noneconomic damages—controls costs. Interest is increasing in system changes, such as establishing special courts and administrative panels with neutral experts; developing early recognition and settlement offers; and replacing the negligence standard with another standard, such as avoidability or no fault. Alternate systems and standards The Scandinavian countries and New Zealand provide examples of alternative systems and standards (Table 1). In 1967, New Zealand started extending its work injury disability insurance to all injuries. An Introduction to Medical Malpractice in the United States.
County Hospital Settles Pair of Medical Negligence Cases. Medical malpractice cases come in many forms. When categorizing the types of malpractice in common parlance, there is usually too much emphasis on the injury itself and less attention on the actual type of negligence alleged. In other words, two patients may file a medical malpractice lawsuit after suffering brain injuries. However, the actual cases could be wildly different depending on how those injuries developed. For one patient, the injury may have been caused by a surgical error, with a doctor making egregious mistakes in the middle of the procedure that led to the injury. In the other case, the problem may be rooted in a failure to diagnosis, with claims not that the doctor caused the initial injury but that the consequences of the injury were far greater than they should have been because the doctor did not identify the problem when a reasonable doctor would have.
Both cases settled recently—the first for $3.5 million and the second for $650,000. See Our Related Blog Posts: 2 nurses suspended for 'intentional patient harm' NEW: 1 baby is critical after catheters were "disrupted" in neonatal intensive care unitNEW: Hospital conducted an internal review in FebruaryNEW: Police have determined the incidents involved "intentional patient harm"Hospital says 14 catheter "disruptions" are reported in unit (CNN) -- The Nevada State Board of Nursing has suspended the licenses of two nurses named by police in a criminal investigation of "disrupted" catheter lines at a hospital neonatal intensive care unit, the board's executive director said Wednesday.
The two nurses, identified in board documents as Jessica May Rice and Sharon Ochoa-Reyes, have not been arrested or charged with a crime, but the nursing board found that the results of the ongoing police investigation warranted the license suspensions. Pfizer Think Science Now. Is respect for autonomy defensible?