Ethics and Values in Health and Social Care

This report discusses the core ethics in nursing homes, factors influencing ethics and values, and ways to resolve ethical issues.

Running head: ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
Ethics and Values in Health and Social Care
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
Introduction:
Considering the fact that social care is provided to a huge number of people across the
world, ethical issues are cetain to arise. The chosen setting of social care for this report is nursing
home. Nursing homes provide short-term rehabilitative residence after a major illness, surgery or
injury that requires occupational therapy, physical therapy or speech therapy. In this report, a
meeting is held by the management of X Nursing home in order to discuss the bellow mentioned
incidents that have imposed a negative impact on the service users of the mentioned nursing
home. Firstly, a staff member of the nursing home had refused to clean the room of a gay
individual since it was against his religion. Secondly, an elderly client was found to be abusive
towards black and Asian staffs. Thirdly, the head office manager has complained about the
untidiness in the staff area. Finally, two co-workers were found to debating about the
effectiveness of beating a child and letting old and lonely people suffering from dementia die
without treatment.
Discussion
Task 1: Discussion of the core ethics in Nursing Home
Ethical values offer a framework for the assessment of the behaviour in a specific nursing
home. Healthcare service users in Nursing Home are responsible for providing care to the
healthcare service users based on ethical issues (Shahriari et al. 2012). It is highly crucial that
they have ethical knowledge that will enable them to conduct the appropriate function in order to
manage the ethical situation and provide proper and safe ethical as well as legal care in the
changing world of today. The X Nursing Home should be highly committed to integrity,
excellence and ethical behaviour in order to enhance the quality of life of the employees as well

2ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
as the healthcare service users. The commitment of the health care providers of the nursing home
should base on incorporating the mission, core values and principles of service in everything
they perform. This includes building effective relationships with the healthcare service users,
employees and their families along with the team members and business partners. The 10 most
crucial ethical values that should be underpinned in the care setting of the mentioned nursing
home include human dignity, justice, autonomy in decision making, privacy, accuracy in caring,
human relationship, commitment, sympathy, honesty and finally individual and professional
competency (Padela et al. 2012). Human dignity is one of the most crucial ethical values which
must be incorporated in the X Nursing home. Respecting an individual includes respecting his
cultural values and ethnicity irrespective of his sexual orientation, race or gender. The absence of
this ethical value among the healthcare service providers as well as the healthcare service users
results in various issues. For instance, lack of respect towards other is evidenced by the
healthcare service provider who discriminated and refused to clean the room of an individual
based on his sexual orientation. Moreover, insulting staffs of the X Nursing home based on their
cultural identity can be considered as another negative impact of lack of Human Respect and
dignity (Rider et al. 2014). Respect towards the dignity of service users includes maintaining
privacy during the clinical procedures and having a proper understanding of the requirements of
the patient's requirements. Social Justice is another ethical value which is highly crucial in the
nursing profession. The concept of social justice deals with the equal opportunity of all
individuals to avail healthcare service and the right of getting treated fairly irrespective of their
economic, cultural and social status. Another mention-worthy ethical value in the nursing
profession includes Autonomy in decision making. This ethical value allows the healthcare
service users to decide whether they want to accept the suggested treatment, care or interventions

3ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
or not (Holloway and Galvin 2016). According to this ethical value, healthcare service providers
should inform patients appropriately about their diagnosis, prevention and treatment at each step
so that they can make an effective decision.
Task 2: Factors which have influenced the ethics and values held by the individuals in the
scenario
As being discussed earlier, several cultural, religious ethical factors affect the behaviour
of one individual towards other. The possible factors that have influenced the ethics and values
held by the individuals involved in the four mentioned incidents are as follows.
Individual factors
The ethical behaviour of an individual gets highly affected by several individual factors that
include knowledge, personal goals, morals, values and personality. More is the information
gathered by an individual about a particular subject, the more ethical decision is made by him
(Trong 2012). For instance, in the mentioned nursing home, two of the employees were found to
be discussing child beating. According to them, the act of child beating is justified since it will
make them disciplined and obedient. They were also found to be debating about whether money
should be invested in the treatment of elderly people who has dementia or not. The subject of
their discussion clearly points out the lack of knowledge and morals.
Values, on the other hand, can be defined as the standard of behaviour and judgment
capabilities of an individual. Values highly affect the behaviour of an individual. People having
low values often tend to perform the unethical act in the workplace just to gain financial or
competitive advantages (Patterson et al. 2016). On the contrary, people who have high value
perform ethical acts even it has temporary risks or difficulties associated with it. For instance, the

4ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
manager of the X Nursing home pointed out the untidiness of the area where staffs reside since it
depicts the lack of care provided to the staffs of the organization. This act may result in an
enhancement in the costs of the organization but will eventually help the staffs to lead a healthy
lifestyle.
Social factors
Cultural norms, religious beliefs, financial condition, friends and families and society in
which an individual resides are three of the crucial social factors that affect the ethical behavior
of an individual. However, these factors along with the individual factor together helps an
individual to determine his ethical action. People who lack knowledge often found to believe in
several illogical religious and cultural norms (Monteverde 2014). For instance, one of the staffs
of the mentioned nursing home has refused to clean the room inhabited by a gay healthcare
service user. The reason stated by him when asked was that that interacting or serving an
individual who is homosexual is prohibited in his religion. From his statement, it can be
understood that superstitions related to his religious belief are the crucial reason behind his
action. Religious beliefs and cultural norms vary from place to place. Lack of cultural
competency and knowledge about the ethical values while dealing with homosexual individuals
can be regarded as two of the chief reason behind this unethical behaviour.
The society also imposes a high impact on the ethical behaviour of an individual. An
individual who grows up in a society where people of a certain group or ethnic background are
discriminated often found to develop low ethical value (Cobb, Puchalski and Rumbold 2012).
For instance, in the mentioned nursing home, an elderly healthcare service user is found to abuse
healthcare service users who have black or Asian background. One of the chief reason behind

5ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
this unethical act of the mentioned individual includes he grew up in a period when racial
discrimination was predominant in the United Kingdom.
Task 3: Identification and explanation of ways to resolve the situations
The above-discussed incidents are imposing a highly negative impact on both the healthcare
service users as well as employees of the organization. Hence the management of X organization
should implement the following strategies to eradicate the above-discussed issues.
 In order to eradicate the problem associated with discrimination of healthcare service
users as well as healthcare service providers, on the basis of their race, ethnicity and
sexual orientation, effective education about cultural competency should be provided to
the healthcare service users. In order to enhance their cultural competencies and respect
for the cultural background as well as the sexual orientation of the patients, training
should be provided to the employees of the organization (Monteverde 2014). However
and educating and training only the healthcare service providers alone cannot eradicate
the issue. Education about the cultural competency should be provided to the healthcare
service users so that they develop the ability to respect the staffs who are appointed to
care for them.
 In order to enhance the tidiness of the area where staffs reside, the company must
implement strategies to clean the mentioned area. In order to prevent reoccurrence of
untidiness in that area in the future, education should be provided to the employees about
the importance of tidiness for leading a healthy lifestyle (Patterson et al. 2016).

6ETHICS AND VALUES IN HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
 Finally to educate the employee about acts that are considered to be unethical and
damaging for the society as well as for an individual, education and knowledge needs to
be provided to the employees of the mentioned organization.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that it is highly crucial for the healthcare
service providers to have effective ethical values in the workplace. Having high ethical values
can prevent a lot of issues which results from unethical behaviour or act performed by healthcare
service providers. However, educating healthcare service users about the importance of ethical
behaviour is also important to enhance the overall quality of service of the health care homes.

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