Legal and Ethical Issues in Healthcare Practice

This study discusses the potential legal and ethical issues in the healthcare practices and the way to mitigate the issues. It highlights on the legislation and the code of medical ethics, which needs to applied for reducing the legal and ethical issues.

Running head: PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Professional Practice
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
Every day, nurses, relatives and health practitioners experience ethical and legal
choices. These challenging dilemmas may include medical procedures, procedures, patient
governance and other issues that occur in the healthcare practice. Ethical issues in
the healthcare practice can require instant reaction, such as creating choices for clients when
they are unable to do so and can involve prolonged action and active decision (Cherry &
Jacob, 2016). As the hazards and advantages of CAM and its communication with allopathic
drugs are deeper known, numerous ethical and legal problems are posed. In addition, latest
developments in law, academic exercise, health policy and business have concentrated focus
on the interaction between supplementary and the conventional medicine and the functions
and duties of medical practitioners (Humber & Almeder, 2013). This study discusses the
potential legal and ethical issues in the healthcare practices and the way to mitigate the issues.
This paper highlights on the legislation and the code of medical ethics, which needs to
applied for reducing the legal and ethical issues.
Identification of the potential issues (legal/ ethical)
Health service practitioners continue to experience ethical and legal problems at the
workforce, placing them at danger of burn-out (Gunn, Taylor & Hutcheon, 2014). Efforts to
reduce health care expenses are putting growing stress on employees to do too much. Limited
resources are forcing hard decisions in the performance of treatment. Patient safety may be
impaired, leading in accident and prosecution. Bioethicists propose that when medical
practitioners exercise ethical principles of the autonomy, fairness, doing great and doing no
damage can assist wellness workers to solve challenging circumstances.
Ethical decisions sometimes take place for the practitioner in traditional medical
practice, and sometimes the practitioner can face ethical dilemmas. On the other hand, the

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prison practitioner can experience ethical circumstances on a weekly basis. The psychiatric
practitioner takes ethical choices about the distribution of treatment, trust and patient support
in the preparation and distribution of secure customer service (Faden et al., 2013). Six ethical
standards that often emerge for a nurse working in a prison environment are as follows:
 Respect for individuals (independence and self-determination)
 Beneficence (doing right)
 Non-malfeasance (preventing damage)
 Justice (justice, honesty, truthfulness)
 Truthfulness (saying the reality)
 Fidelity (staying loyal to one's engagement)
These guidelines act as a manual for practitioners to make ethical choices. The
psychiatric practitioner can discover assistance for ethical choices by speaking to a code of
conduct and ethics of the Healthcare practice (Hall, Orentlicher, Bobinski, Bagley & Cohen,
2018). The Code sets out ethical norms for practitioners across all environments, stages and
functions, sets expectations and provides advice.
The legal consequences of healthcare practice are linked to licensure, government and
national legislation, the range of exercise and the public believe that practitioners exercise at
a strong skilled level. Nurse training, licensing and training standards provide the structure
under which nurses are supposed to exercise. When the operation of a practitioner drops
below reasonable norms of service and expertise, it exposes the nurse to litigation.
Litigation may be based on negligence, failure to practice the amount of treatment that
a decent, prudent doctor would have under comparable conditions, malpractice, and
professional negligence and that is an offense of neglect undertaken in the position of a
practitioner (Herring, 2014). Failure and committee will also be susceptible to the litigation

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and the professional licensing assessment by the practitioner. Both dispute and qualified
permit assessment may lead in a reprimand of a practitioner's permit or a reduction of a
permit.
Correctional nurses may be particularly susceptible to the litigation as the population
of detention patients has a legislative right to health care. As a result, inmates-patients meet
practitioners more than any other form of health care staff. Failure to provide the patients
with exposure to the health care for satisfying their severe medical requirements may be
treated as intentional disregard.
Appropriate legislation and association’s code of ethics (400)
A copy of a declaration needs to be provided to every applicant while making
the application for the registration pursuant to the provisions of the Act and needs to
be submitted duly signed declaration as set out in the rules of the healthcare practice. The
candidate should certify that he or she has written and decided to do so. The Code of Ethics,
which clarifies the tasks and duties of the industry and offers advice to the practitioner on
prevalent ethical issues. Ethical standards can encourage the principles of collaboration and
cooperative practice. Finally, ethical norms in medical practice encourage other significant
personal and cultural principles, such as personal accountability, animal freedoms and patient
welfare, to comply with the legislation, laws and patient security (Francer et al., 2014). The
increasingly recognized appreciation of a Certified Practitioner in the Healthcare Quality and
the changes in the healthcare practice has led to a fresh recognition of the vital position of
healthcare professionals.
The responsibilities and duties of the practitioner in general:
 Character of the Practitioner

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 Maintenance of good medical practice
 Maintaining the medical records
 Displaying the registration numbers
 Usage of Generic names of the medicines
 Highest Quality of Assurance in the patient care (Mosadeghrad, 2014)
 Exposure of the Unethical Conduct
 Payment for the Professional Services
 Evasion of the Legal Restrictions
Duties of the Practitioner to the Patients
 Obligations to the patient
 Patience, Secrecy and Delicacy
 Prognosis
 The Patient should never be neglected
 Engagement for the Obstetric case
Duties of the Practitioner in Consultation
 Unnecessary consultations must be avoided
 Consultation for the benefit of the patients
 Punctuality in the Consultation
 Statement to the Patient after the Consultation
 Treatment after the Consultation
 Patients Referred to the Specialists
 Fees and the other charges

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Responsibilities of the Practitioner to Each Other
 Conduct in the consultation
 Consultant needs not to take charge for the case (Begley et al., 2013)
 Appointment of the Substitute
 Visiting another case of Practitioner
Duties of the Practitioner to Public and to Paramedical Profession
 Physicians as Citizens
 Community Health and Public
 Practitioner and Pharmacists (FitzGerald & Bange, 2015)
Unethical Acts
 Advertising
 Copy and Patent rights
 Running the open shop
 Commission and Rebates
 Euthanasia
 Human Rights
 Secret Remedies
Misconduct
 Violation of Regulations
 Improper or Adultery Conduct
 Sex Determination Tests
 Conviction by the Court of Law
 Signing the Professional Reports, Certificates and other documents

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 Research
Mitigation of the risks
The reputation of the healthcare practice and the faith on the stakeholders are the two
vital assets. By making the healthcare practice, where the conduct will be norm can protect
the reputation of the practice and increase the engagement of the employee. The ethical and
legal issues can be mitigated by these following aspects.
Honestly assess the resources and requirements: Successful businesses start with a
good plan. So do successful ethics and compliance programs. In order to create a relevant and
meaningful plan, you have to know the lay of the land (Smith, Soeters, Wüst & Houtkooper,
2018). It is very crucial to know about the common challenges of ethics, higher area of risk,
important values of the healthcare practice and the staffs, necessary value of the business,
beneficial compliance resources, vales and code of development.
Establishment of strong foundation: Once it is known about the requirement, the
healthcare practice can put the resources in place for addressing them by the robust
establishment of the compliance and ethical program. Compliance and ethics program is a
potential tool to minimize the pressure for the observation of the misconduct and the
compromising standards. The potential foundation included with the elements such as:
 Written standards of the ethical healthcare practice conduct
 Training and learning about the standards
 Performance evaluation of the ethical conduct
 Systems to the discipline violators
 Provided advice from the healthcare practice resources about the compliance and
ethical issues

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Build culture of the integrity: There are many aspects that the leader of the
organization or the practice must do for promoting a potential ethical culture in the healthcare
practice:
 To talk about significance of morality
 Keep staff properly updated about problems that affect them
 Maintain promises and obligations to staff and shareholders (Feldman, Bahamonde &
Velasquez Bellido, 2014)
 Recognizing and rewarding ethical behavior.
 Responsibility for those who breach norms, particularly politicians
 A model of ethical behavior, both professionally and socially
Keep values focus in moments: Ethics is about the choices either big or small.
Integrity of the healthcare practice holds their principles at the heart of both worldly and
exceptional times. Corporate principles should enter into practice and be expressed in a
number of procedures that guide the company's everyday existence, including:
 Hiring and retention
 HR policies and the execution of the policies
 Management and evaluation of performance
 Reward systems
 Promotion decisions
Required re-evaluate and revise: Situations and requires are going to alter. The
organisation needs to understand what is happening, what is not, what fresh vulnerabilities
have appeared, what strides the organisation has made and where job still needs to be
performed. Be trained to review the state of the ethics and enforcement in the healthcare
practice on a regular basis.

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Conclusion
This can be concluded by this study that the ethics of healthcare practice is the vital
issue for the people of the society as the healthcare provision is crucial to the each person’s
well-being and the treatment of the people. The key issue, which arises for the healthcare
provision for those are concerning about the best treatment of the patients and they are
concerning about the public policy as determinative of the health service allocation. For
attempting to mitigate these issues the healthcare practice needs to provide the framework
according to the better quality decision by using the philosophical analysis of the people.

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