Essay On Ethical Dilemmas In Health Care

As kids, we were thought to always tell the truth, a situation that seemed to be black and white. As we grow older, the reality of things becomes more complex. We are challenged in situations where telling the truth is not as easy and we have to consider how the recipient will interpret the information. We learn to outweigh the positive and negative outcomes if we tell the truth. Recipients, such as the patients, have many rights. They have the right to consent, the right to information, teaching, confidentiality, respect and security. They also have the right to know the truth about their medical status. This right can be perceived as an ethical dilemma for health care professionals, especially towards patients on a palliative care unit. This paper discusses the ethical dilemma …show more content…
An example of this is, a physician may ask a nurse to withhold information on a patient’s health status until further tests are done. Sometimes, a family member may request the health care professionals to not divulge to their loved one how aggressive their disease is. A palliative setting is defined as an environment where an individual with a severe life-threatening disease or aggressive diseases, are helped with decisions about end of life care (Erichsen, Danielsson, Friedrichsen, 2010). Health care professionals are faced with many ethical dilemmas especially when the family members of the patient disagree with how their loved one should be cared for; the disagreement of stopping a certain treatment, withholding fluids and nutrition, the signing of a “do not resuscitate” form, the administration of pain medication, disclosing their diagnosis and prognosis etc. (McCabe & Coyle, 2014). Situations like these, become a problem because it affects bioethical principals such as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, fidelity and veracity. Disclosure of