Healthcare professionals have a responsibility to ensure that they offer high-quality and safe patient care in the care environment. However, they usually face cases of varying magnitudes that they have to solve. Even though some may be simple, others are not straightforward forward hence needing them to settle for value challenging ethical decisions (ACHE, 2019). Fortunately, the profession offers principles that can be integrated with moral values to guide the decision-making process. The implication is that the professionals have to understand and recognize that dilemmas are common; hence one has to remain unbiased while making the decisions regarding such cases based on ethics. Therefore, the purpose of this assignment is to explore an assigned case involving an ethical dilemma and use the ethical decision-making model in the case analysis to explore the factors which led to the problem and the ethical problem.
The assigned case concerns a recently recruited director, E.L straight, who is working at the Hopewell Hospital as clinical services director. He oversees the daily operations and has made several improvements in the center since his appointment by formulating new programs. An established surgeon, Dr. Cutrite has served in the hospital for years, but he has been deteriorating clinically in terms of his physical and mental capabilities. The doctors’ case worries Straight and has been pondering over reducing his load and privileges, but apparent Cutrite is connected and politically powerful. He has been responsible for some of the medical mistakes happening in the hospital. In one of such cases, the surgeon operated on a patient named Jameson but apparently forgot to take a surgical cap from the patient when closing the wounds. The operating room supervisor who identified the problem immediately brought it to Mr. Straight’s attention. Straight asks the possibility of taking the patient back to the operating room through pretense to search for the cap, but the patient was already discharged.
When the case was brought to Dr. Cutrite’s attention, he insisted that there is no reason to take action, the patient should not be notified, and that it may only result in mild discomfort and the patient can never know. Mr. Straight then seeks the opinion of the chief of surgery by creating a hypothetical situation and inquiries about the likely outcome if a surgical cap remains inside a patient. While the chief of surgeon immediately knew that something was amiss, he did not pursue the case further and argued that the patient would only have mild discomforts, but one can’t be sure of what might be. Even though the supervisor loves working at the facility, he is wary of Dr. Cutrite’s influence and power, hence has to carry out his tasks more cautiously. From the case, Mr. Straight is encountering an ethical dilemma, whether to proceed with disciplinary action against the surgeon and make the patient know what happened, which is the right thing to do, or to completely ignore the case and proceed with other assignments.
Mr. Straight is facing a dilemma caused by the surgeon leaving a surgical cap inside Mr. Jameson and failing to neither consider taking it nor informing the patient. From the inquiries, Mr. Straight realizes that the patient faces a risk even though it may be low risk with the cap still inside her. In addition, he knows that Dr. Cutrite is declining hence leading to medical mistakes performed during surgical procedures. Worrying still is the fact that the chief of surgery is turning a blind eye to this situation. While the supervisor wills to solve this case, there is a lack of will from both the chief of surgery and Dr. Cutrite, who hold the opinion that that patient may only face minimal risk. He is also concerned that while the doctor continues making more mistakes, he does not want to take responsibility. However, Mr. Straight faces a tough task against the clinically declining yet politically powerful surgeon in trying to lower the privileges, which will help lower the surgical mistakes cases.
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