Ethics and Values in Health and Social Care

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