Importance of Ethical Behaviour in Organizations: A Case Study of Stafford Hospital
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This report focuses on the importance of ethical behaviour in organizations, using the case study of Stafford Hospital. It examines the impact of unethical behaviour on the hospital's staff, public confidence, and reputation, and provides recommendations for ensuring ethical standards.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report had focused on importance of ethical behaviour for the organizations and ways in which it can affect them. This report had focused on Stafford Hospital’s scandal in which approximately 1200 patients died between January 2005 and March 2009 because of various reasons such as lack of staff members, lack of quality of care, lack of provision of basic necessities such as food, water, medicines and many more factors. This report had also focused on whether Stafford engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate, what can Stafford do to ensure ethical behaviour? And recommendations through which ethical standards within an organization can be maintained.
TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1 MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1 Whether Stafford engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate...1 What can Stafford do to ensure ethical behaviour?.....................................................................3 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4 RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................5 REREFENCES................................................................................................................................6
INTRODUCTION Ethics can be defined as moral principles that helps in governing a person’s or an organization’s behaviour. Ethics can also be defined as a system of moral principles that affects the way in which people or organization’s make decisions(Dutta, Mishra and Budhwar, 2017). Ethical behaviour is one of the most important factors which is required to be focused on by the organizations. It helps in providing various kinds of benefits to the business such as reduces employee turnover, increases productivity and many more. This report will lay emphasis on case study of Stafford hospital. This hospital is facing situation of crises in standard of care because of which 400-1200 patients died between January 2005 and March 2009 due to poor care. This wasmainlybecauseoflackofstaff;inadequatelytrainedstaffmembersweregiven responsibilities beyond their capabilities. This was also because of wrong decision taken by external bodies, management and board who were responsible for inspecting and monitoring hospital care. Because of rising demand and tight budgets board cut down £10m from overall spendingofthehospital.Itwasalsoobservedthatstaffmembersofthehospitallack compassion, morale. This was affecting overall care level that was provided to the patients and overall quality level of the patients was also degrading because of this. Stafford Hospital is run by Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust and is a well- known trusted organization. It is extremely important for them to maintain their overall reputation and standard. Maintenance of standard and reputation of the organization is important because it will help them to boost morale of the staff members, increase compassion in staff members. This will also help them to enhance their overall quality of care provided to patients. The main aim of this report is to understand whether organisations engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate and things that can be done by organization to ensure ethical standards. ANALYSIS Introduction This analysis section will focus on a case study of Stafford Hospital who are facing various kinds of issues in standard of care which is provided to the patients. They have been facing various kinds of unethical behaviour situation because of which between January 2005 and March 2009 approximately 1200 patients had died due to poor care and negligence of quality care. This section will analyse whether Stafford should allowed to operate in unethical behaviour by focusing on their unethical behaviour impact on hospital staff, public confidence and Stafford 1
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Hospital’s reputation other than this, this section will also focus on analysis of what Stafford can do to ensure ethical behaviour. Whether Stafford engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate Importance of maintaining standard of care It is extremely important for organizations to maintain their standard of care and should focus on operating ethically as it not onlyaffects their reputationand quality of services that are being offered to them but it also affects people associated with the organization i.e. their customers, employees and many more. Especially for healthcare organizations it is extremely important to maintain their ethical behaviour because it directly or indirectlyimpacts public confidencein them and overall care which is being provided to the patients. Negligence of care can result in degrading health of the patients sometimes it cost patient’s lives. Factors that explains why organizations with unethical behaviour should not be allowed to operate There are various factors that can help in understanding that organizations that continue their unethical behaviour should not be allowed to operate. In the case study of Stafford Hospitals, they had given responsibilities to their inadequately trained staff members beyond their capabilities for example night shift ward charge was given to junior doctors without guidance of any senior doctors, or non- medical staff members were asked to triage patients(van der Walt and Steyn, 2019). These kinds of issues were arising within the hospitals because of lack of staff members and reduction of overall spending of the hospital by £10m were also responsible for such kind of issues. These issues were also affecting quality of care that was provided to the patients. Due to lack of staff members patients were not provided with food, water, medicines on time. These issues were not only degrading standards of the hospitals but were also affecting trust of patients within hospital staff members or within the hospitals. It is one of the most important and serious issue which itself is sufficient to say that organizations like Stafford should not be allowed to continue to operate until and unless they bring changes within their standards, ethical practises. Hospital external bodies, management and board was only focusing on reducing overall expenditure they were least focused on overall ethical behaviour of the staff members or providing excellent service to the patients. They did not even focus on the fact that due to lack of staff members patients were not receiving treatment which they should be 2
provided with. This directlyimpacted all the staff membersof the organization as their started practising unethical practises, did not focus on patients, had low morale etc. This scandal was one of the biggest scandals that reflected crises in standard of care of the care because of which changes within overall behaviour of the staff members were also observed. Most of the staff members behaved unethically, they lacked morale because of which expectation of patients from the hospital were decreasing, lack of dignity in safe environment, lack of maintenance of hygienic conditions from senior staff members were observed. Without bringing improvement within their environment, adopting ethical practises, behaving in an ethical manner, Stafford should not be allowed to continue to operate especially health and social care organizations as because of their unethical behaviour their put lives of many patients at risk, degrade the quality of care that should be provided to them. If extent to which the reputation of the Stafford hospital has been damaged is observed or analysed then it can be said that their overall reputation was damaged drastically. This is majorly because, this scandal not only impacted Stafford hospital reputationbut it also affected overall reputation of NHS trust and image of the trust among people because their quality of care was compressed by the hospital, because of this scandal many other trust were kept under investigation in order to ensure overall quality care of the patients. This degraded quality of care of patients was going on from 2005 to 2009, they should have taken actions initially itself and should have focused on enhancing overall quality of care and ethical behaviour this could have helped them to reduce number of patient’s deaths that happened till march, 2009. Conclusion So, it can be said that it has impacted overall public confidance on the organization they do not trust Stafford for provision of medical care and facilities provided to the patients. Continuation of unethical behaviour within the organization has also impacted medical staff members as they do not pay much attention on patient care some of them even lack morale. This has drastically impacted overall reputation of the hospital helps Stafford should not be allowed to operate till they bring improvement within operations. What can Stafford do to ensure ethical behaviour? Due to this scandal reputation of Stafford and NHS trust was damaged drastically, trust of patients within the hospital and its care was reduced. It was extremely important for the organization to ensure ethical behaviour within organization, its staff members and other people 3
associated with the organization. Stafford could have worked on conducting various kinds of ethical programs in order to observe misconduct and enhance their overall ethical behaviour.In order to ensure ethical behaviour within the organization changes within overall culture of the organization can be brought. Bringing changes within overall culture will also help in developing a positive environment which will further help the organization to maintain their ethical behaviours.Some other ways through which Stafford could have ensured ethical behaviour are as follows: Training is one of the best ways through which staff members or employees can be educated about standards of quality of care, importance of ethical behaviour and ways in which staff members can contribute in enhancing overall standard and reputation of the organization (Ishak, Haronand Ismail, 2019). Training and development program can help the organization to make their employees understand what is at risk how their behaviour would affect overall quality care service which is being provided to the patients and their health. Conducting internal and external audit can help Stafford to ensure ethical behaviour. Conduction of internal and external audit can also help the organization to understand issues that have being going on within the organization or issues that are being faced by the patients, unethical behaviour of the staff members towards patients or other kinds of issues. Conduction of audit can also help Stafford to understand level till which these issues are affecting the organization. Both internal and external audit should be conducted within a fixed internal of times so that all kinds of improvement made within ethical behaviour of an organizations and analysis of issues that have been resolved(Baumane-Vītoliņa and et. al., 2017). Other than this recruitment and selection of staff members plays a vital role in ensuring ethical behaviour within the organization. While recruiting and selecting staff members organizations should both morale and ethical issues that can occur ways in which staff members would be contributing in provision of quality care to the patients. Stafford should also focus on rewarding or acknowledging ethical behaviour of the employees. Rewarding or acknowledging this kind of behaviour of the employees and staff members will help Stafford not only to maintain ethical behaviour but will also help the organization to enhance their raff members morale, reduce employee turnover and staff members would be working more dedicatedly. This will help the organization to ensure their standard of care, ethical behaviour. 4
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Other than this Stafford could have also asked their staff members to participate within organizational decision making by explaining or making organization aware about the current issues, ethical dilemma’s that are being faced by the staff members and patients(Maria, Githii and Ombati, 2018). This will help the organization to plan ahead and ensure ethical behaviour of the staff members. Employees could also be asked for writing their own personal codes i.e. things that they would never do like ignore medical requirement of the patients, offer of unethical incentives and many more. This will not only help the organization to maintain ethical behaviour but will also help them to identify issues that can occur within the organization in future. CONCLUSION From the above analysis it has been summarised that there are various kinds of issues occurring within Stafford because of which their standard of care has been reduced, unethical behaviour within the organization is increasing. Most of the patients are not getting proper care they are not even provided with proper medical facilities. It has also been analysed that many staff members lack morale, lack compassion which was affective overall quality of care service. Other than this cost cut down made by the board also resulted in lack of required number of staff members and because of these issues overall health of many patients was getting degraded and more than 1200 patients died. It was analysed that Stafford should not be allowed to operate till they ensure high ethical behaviour within their organization. RECOMMENDATIONS Here are various standards that can help Stafford which will help them to ensure their ethical standards. Some of the recommendation on the basis of above analysis are as follows: First recommendation is to set some fundamental standards about patient’s safety, basic care and effectiveness of their care. these standards will help the organization to maintain their overall quality of care service which is being provided to the patients. Cause of death or serious harm to patients by non- compliance should be treated as serious offence and strict actions should be taken(Paludi, Cox and Rogers, 2019). All the employees should be encouraged to report any kind of non- compliance observed by them so that stands of care can be maintained and quality of care of patients can be enhanced. In order to identify issues faced by patients or any other kinds of issue working as a barrier in provision of care of patients, auditing should be done. Both internal and external auditing 5
should be done on the basis of UK’s ethical and auditing standards. This will help the organization to ensure that all kinds of ethical standards are being followed by both staff members and patients as well. One of the best recommendations to ensure ethical standards within the organization is conductionoftraininganddevelopmentprogram.Thesekindsofprogramshelp organizations like Stafford to educate their employees about fundamental standards of care or any other regulations or compliances associated with care quality and patient’s safety. 6
REREFENCES Books and Journals Baumane-Vītoliņa, I., and et. al., 2017. Ethical behaviour and honesty in post-Soviet business environment.Baltic Journal of Management. Dutta, D., Mishra, S.K. and Budhwar, P.S., 2017. Ensuring ethical competency measures in organizations: An exploratory study. InAcademy of Management Proceedings(Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 12039). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management. Ishak, N.K., Haron, H. and Ismail, I., 2019. Ethical Leadership, Ethical Climate and Unethical Behaviour in Institutions of Higher Learning.KnE Social Sciences, pp.408-422. Maria, M.J., Githii, W. and Ombati, O.T., 2018. Ethics and procurement performance of humanitarian organizations in Kenya.American Journal of Industrial and Business Management.8(4). pp.833-849. Paludi, M., Cox, J.C. and Rogers, H.A., 2019. Ethical Behavior as We Advance Technology.The Journal of Government Financial Management.68(1). p.54. van der Walt, F. and Steyn, P., 2019. Workplace spirituality and the ethical behaviour of project managers.SA Journal of Industrial Psychology.45(1). pp.1-9. 7