Exploring Healthcare Ethics: IDEA Framework and Social Media Analysis

This report delves into the ethical challenges faced by healthcare organizations striving to provide quality care amidst financial constraints. It examines the limitations of principle-based approaches like distributive justice and technical solutions like cost-effective analysis in resolving priority-based dilemmas, advocating for procedural fairness through frameworks like IDEA (Ethical Decision-Making Framework). The report elucidates how the IDEA framework guides healthcare professionals and administrators in navigating ethical issues, offering examples of both clinical and organizational ethical decisions. Furthermore, it analyzes the increasing use of social media by hospitals to promote services and engage with patients, while also addressing concerns about patient privacy breaches, misinformation, and the financial burden of maintaining secure social media platforms. The report concludes by highlighting the need for effective guidelines and monitoring systems to mitigate risks associated with social media use in healthcare.

Running head: HEALTHCARE ETHICS
HEALTHCARE ETHICS
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Question number 1:
Every healthcare organisations are trying to provide quality care to all their service
users in the face of significant financial constraints and therefore, they are facing various
difficulties. Studies have found that both principle based like distributive justice as well as
technical solutions like cost effective analysis alone are not being able to resolve priority
based challenges (Leonardi and Vaast 2017). In such areas, given that there may be
competing gaols as well as values, organisations need to ensure procedural fairness. This
might be the best ways for ensuring that all decisions are socially accepted and that they are
demonstrating public accountability. In such arena, IDEA framework is found to be
extremely helpful and befitting as it performs the mentioned actions (Pennel et al. 2016).
The main benefit of the IDEA framework (Ethical Decision-Making Framework) is
that it helps in providing step-wise fair procedure in guiding healthcare professionals as well
as administrators. It helps them in working through different ethical issues that are
encountered in the delivery of healthcare services. This framework can be utilised in guiding
the different decision making as well as taking actions regarding ethical issues that might
arise at the bedside to that of even the boardrooms. This frame work helps in addressing two
general types of ethical decisions that might lie across the continuum of care like the
organisational and clinical. These would be described with the help of examples.
 Clinical decision-making can involve those ethical issues that have the
capacity of affecting specific individuals or that of staff members and focusing
on individual values (Hanea, Burgman and Hemming 2018). This might
include questions regarding decisions like “Should life sustaining treatment of
Mr. Bobby Smith be discontinued?”

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 Organisational ethical decisions are considered to include those that affect
cohorts of “staff members, systems, units, or patients/clients/residents or the
organization as a whole and centre on the values of the organization”.
Example might include “should the material-child program be reduced,
expanded or remain unchanged?”
Question number 2:
Present day hospitals are trying to extend their reaches across the population by
creating social media accounts. One of the main reasons is to promote their services, being in
contact with patients to understand their needs, modify their support services accordingly. It
is also helpful for the busy healthcare professionals who can maintain their own community
and contact over the social media to be up-to-date (Lagu et al. 2016). One of the studies have
found out that it provides a base for interacting with patients like providing them with general
information about healthcare and common conditions, encouraging patients to share their
thoughts and feedbacks (Leonardi and Vaast 2017).
However, one of the negative impacts is that it acts as a concern for breaches in
patient privacy and confidentiality. Hospital staffs might publish personal information about
patients to the media that result in privacy and confidentiality breach of patients. It would
result the organisation to get involved in legal obligation that might affect their reputations. It
also creates create huge safety issues for the patients whose information had been leaked on
the social media accounts. Therefore, maintaining social accounts create additional burden on
the management systems to follow effective guidelines that would prevent such actions and
control them.
Moreover, incomplete or improper flow of information can also affect the patient’s
decisions and actions. Improper clinical health knowledge might result individuals in taking

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up wrong lifestyle practices or make them believe over fact, which have no reliability. This
might affect the mental stability of patients and affect their physical health as well.
Organisations might face huge challenges in creating a secure monitoring system that could
result in potential charges of malpractice (Leonardi and Vaast 2017). Again, that might create
additional pressure on the financial issues that are faced by every healthcare organisation.
Allocating financial and human resources for maintaining such social media accounts add to
the burden of healthcare organisations.

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References:
Hanea, A.M., Burgman, M. and Hemming, V., 2018. IDEA for uncertainty quantification.
In Elicitation (pp. 95-117). Springer, Cham.
Lagu, T., Goff, S.L., Craft, B., Calcasola, S., Benjamin, E.M., Priya, A. and Lindenauer,
P.K., 2016. Can social media be used as a hospital quality improvement tool?. Journal of
hospital medicine, 11(1), pp.52-55.
Leonardi, P.M. and Vaast, E., 2017. Social media and their affordances for organizing: A
review and agenda for research. Academy of Management Annals, 11(1), pp.150-188.
Pennell, C.P., Hirst, A.D., Campbell, W.B., Sood, A., Agha, R.A., Barkun, J.S.T. and
McCulloch, P., 2016. Practical guide to the idea, development and exploration stages of the
IDEAL framework and recommendations. British Journal of Surgery, 103(5), pp.607-615.