Ethical Issues in Health and Social Care

ETHICAL ISSUES IN
HEALTH AND SOCIAL
CARE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
CASE SCENARIO..........................................................................................................................1
ETHICAL DILEMMA....................................................................................................................1
AUTONOMY..................................................................................................................................2
JUSTICE..........................................................................................................................................2
NON MALEFICENCE....................................................................................................................3
BENEFICENCE..............................................................................................................................3
CONSEQUENTIALISM.................................................................................................................4
COMPARE PRINCIPALISM AND CONSEQUENTIALISM......................................................5
MY DECISION...............................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Ethical dilemma refers to those conditions where decision makers have given choice to
choose best option in highly acceptable manner. In general ethical issues in health and social care
sectors are occurred due to increase of economic stress, rise of self-determination of sick people
as well as difference in values of staff members and patients (Hollis and et. al., 2015). The
present report is based on ethical dilemma in health and social care where a case study is
presented to highlight how service providers take decisions and deals with ethical issues. For this
purpose, some theories and approaches are described which entails how decisions related to
patient’s care have taken in ethical manner.
CASE SCENARIO
Patient A was a 56 years old father of five children with a history of lung cancer of last
stage. Since last hospitalization, patient A conditions worsened due to cancer and was not
maintaining oxygen saturation (Brown, Ryan and Harris, 2014). Therefore, such person was
continuously getting oxygen as well. It has seen that the patient had become stubborn and denied
treatments such as insertion of a urinary catheter and insertion of nasogastric tube. Patient’s
family members and doctors were well aware of prognosis but hidden from the patient. After one
month of hospital stay, sick person wanted to discharge from the hospital and wanted to stay at
hus house in last days of his life. That patient also complaints about not getting better in spite of
giving all treatment.
ETHICAL DILEMMA
Ethics refers to understand the concept of practical reasoning. It shows how staff members,
nurses and doctors face ethical dilemmas while dealing with patients on regular basis. Ethical
behaviour can be identified by various aspects like in what manner, workers at healthcare sector
take decisions in different-different manner for resolving ethical issues of patients and make
decisions accordingly (Bowling, 2014). Ethical problems which arise in hospitals are affected by
all members of health care team including nurses. The essay includes the dilemma which a nurse
faced during clinical practice Nurses face difficulties in making decision due to some ethical
approaches during their work at hospitals. According to ethical standard, a nurse action must be
defendable in an ethical issue. The choice of action depends on the advantages and disadvantages
of issue, so such decision depends accordingly. For example: When patient A who have no
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