Health Professional's Dilemmas Essay Example

In the current world, there is emergence of various types of professionalism in which everybody strives to fit in one of careers. These professional chances vary as with accordance to the various fields of interest. The health sector is one of the most critical sectors in the current world as each nation tries as hard as it can to save its citizens from health problems and death. This sector is critical as it deals with the lives of people. People will seek help from a medical professional and the professional will have to be careful to avoid hurting the patient. The health sector though being a critical sector, it is at times faced by challenges that will be discussed in this paper. Health care service providers often have a great impact in delivering and offering health services to the patients. Dilemmas often emerge requiring that the medical practitioners make very difficult decisions that at times may be negative to the general public but to the patient; they suit and are the only option that is left. Ethical leadership and decision-making are key components of health care managerial course programs.

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In consideration of all factors, the health professionals are restricted to do what they believe is right due to the morals and the holdings of the community they serve. The community may expect the health professionals to perform their task in a given manner and order without having the background information regarding a situation that may arise during the professional's life (Kalvemark, pp. 1080-1082). Every living individual has his rights to do what he/she thinks is right thus the health professionals are at times in dilemma trying to save a life but what they do seems immoral to the society and wrong in accordance to the law.

Murder in most countries is a dreadful sin which leads to life imprisonment despite to whoever person it is committed to. For instance, health professionals find a hard time trying to save an unborn child in its mother's womb when complications during birth arise. For example, when the child is maybe overweight or the cervix opens before the actual pregnancy period is over, there is labor that is uncalled for and this may lead to the death of the unborn baby while not yet delivered (Kalvemark, pp.1077-1079). A medical profession may find it worth trying to save the mother rather than the unborn infant since one may reason that the mother will conceive again and bear another child.

In addition, a condition known as placenta Previa may arise in which case the placenta attaches itself to the down part of the womb. This condition arises especially when there are several cesarean sections have been done earlier to the mother. This condition may be fatal during birth and may cause the health practitioner to forego the life of the child and save the mother's life. This may result to the community to view it as murder to the unborn but to the health practitioner may view it as a good and excellent step in saving the life of a productive citizen. In addition, the health practitioner may be faced with a case of solving a conflict or issues amongst the officers that he/she is working with (Kalvemark, pp. 1075-1077). This may even mean to terminate the operation period and ending a health practitioner career. This may happen when may be an officer is accused by a patient of committing a crime that according to him/her, it was right but ethically, the operation was wrong. The officer in charge of solving such a case is in a dilemma as making a decision will have to consider both sides, evaluate, and pass a decision according to his/her best of knowledge.

The act that the health officer takes and the ethics expected of him/her by the citizens and relatives of the patient at times contrasts and this leads to the health officer ending up in a dilemma when another case of the same kind arises (Townsend, et al. pp. 185-186). Therefore some decisions needs to be made despite the contrasting nature and what is expected of the practitioner.

In another case, a health practitioner may make a decision that according to him/her is the best decision that suits a particular scenario. For instance, a medical practitioner may be faced with a scenario in which a patient in a critical situation in which the medical practitioner aware that the patient will not make it to survive thus he/she may opt to give his/her patient a sympathetic death in order to relieve the patient the agony and the suffering that he/she is passing through (Jameton, pp. 542-547). To the medical practitioner, he/she may view it as the appropriate act but as in accordance to the communitarian ethics, that act is not appropriate, as it will be referred to as murder of an innocent soul. This maybe something that the professional may have done out of pity but the health professional body will punish the medical professional.

In conjunction to this, the medical practitioner may also find himself in the dilemma of ethics of privacy whereby he/she is required to keep the topmost secret to himself/herself but this may turn out otherwise especially when compelled to talk about it or when defending himself/herself in a court of law. According to the communitarian ethics, it is expected that the secret will at topmost be safe with the medical practitioner but it turns out otherwise (Pellegrino, pp. 32-36). For instance, when a patient is infected with a deadly disease with no cure or vaccine, and that the patient is on the last stage of such a disease taking an example of HIV/AIDS, the patient may request a health practitioner to inject him/her with a toxin that will cause cardiac failure thus leading to a slow death that will end suffering and somehow relieve the patients family the burden of paying more bills in his/her name. This to the medical practitioner may seem correct but as in accordance to the communitarian ethics is wrong.

Conclusion

In conclusion, though these dilemmas are present in our day-to-day life, the medical practitioner is supposed to be efficiently trained on the ethics that he/she is expected to follow by his/her fellow citizens. This will help him/her to cope and be in a position to make the correct decision that will not push him/her to the extreme in case of review of the decision made. In addition, the communitarian ethics should provide room for the extreme cases as not everything would be perfect except in the theoretical form. Very high degree of conduct is expected from the health practitioners but what the community living around does not understand is that at times things do not turn out the expected way and thus ruthless decisions must be passed and also those that do not conform to the ethics expected.

Works cited

Kalvemark, Sofia, et al. "Living with conflicts-ethical dilemmas and moral distress in the health care system." Social science & medicine 58.6 (2004): 1075-1084.

Townsend, Anne, Sally Wyke, and Kate Hunt. "Self-managing and managing self: practical and moral dilemmas in accounts of living with chronic illness." Chronic illness 2.3 (2006): 185-194.

Jameton, Andrew. "Dilemmas of moral distress: moral responsibility and nursing practice." AWHONN's clinical issues in perinatal and women's health nursing 4.4 (1993): 542-551.

Pellegrino, Edmund D. "Toward a reconstruction of medical morality: the primacy of the act of profession and the fact of illness." The journal of medicine and philosophy 4.1 (1979): 32-56.