HNU 302 2024 Law & Ethics in Healthcare Assignment Sample

Introduction To: HNU 302 (2024) – Law and Ethics in Healthcare

Laws and ethics in healthcare refers to different rules and regulation that individuals are expected to follow while providing effective care and services to others. There are various cultural, moral, Legal and ethical principle which needs to be initiated by the practitioners for providing the utmost care to others. The role of eldercare provider includes assisting patients in daily activities such as bathing, dressing and grooming. Eldercare providers are also responsible for mitigating the feeling of isolation and loneliness among patients by providing them with emotional support. The current easy will discuss the moral, legal, ethical and cultural principles related to the elderly care. It will also discuss various impact of non-compliance in relation to the legal regulation and the guidelines for protecting the patients. It will further discuss the role of healthcare professional in taking the effective decision based on ethical and legal perspective. Further, it will include critical analysing all the challenges and issues associated with taking effective decision in relation to the elderly care.

Tight Schedule, Tough Assignment? Fast UK Assignment Help Saves the Day – Check Free Examples!

MAIN BODY

From the study conducted by the BMC geriatrics, it has identified that half of the total population above the age of 65 are living their life with long term mental and physical disabilities. This has resulted in increasing the need of eldercare provider within the country. It has further identified that due to the emergence of the nuclear family concept and high migration rate, the elderly people have faced the issue of isolation and loneliness which creates huge impact on their overall health condition (Char, Abràmoff and Feudtner, 2020). Along with this, it has depicted that around 543000 people are taking the help of eldercare providers for completing their daily activities (Need of Elder healthcare provider, 2023). For safeguarding elders from all the unethical practices, authority has initiated various legal and ethical principles which should be followed within the healthcare practices.

There are various legal principles that provided by the authority to protect the wellbeing and rights of the elderly people. The healthcare provider needs to align its activities and actions with the Equality Act 2010 that aims at preventing discrimination and inequality (The Equality Act 2010, 2023). They should understand the development issues of the elder people so that adequate measures could be initiated. Focus should also be paid on addressing and acknowledging the diversity among all the patients. Further healthcare professional is required to indulge in Health risk reduction process and provides person centred care to the others. They should emphasis over educating clients, screening, early identification and provide brief information of treatment to the elders for promoting transparency in their services (Farrell et al, 2020). This principle should be followed by each eldercare provider as it will assist in promoting transparency among the elders related to their condition and support in taking decision based on their consent. Non-adherence with the legal principle will create various negative impacts that include fines, penalties, licence revocation, security breaches and lawsuits. It has identified that based on the HIPPA resolution agreement, a care provider is liable for the huge amount of penalties and fines for non-compiling with the required principle.

HIPAA Non-Compliance and Fitness to Practice in Elderly Care

It has estimated that HIPAA fines around 1.5 million pound on the healthcare organization for not adhering with the principles. In this context, a well-known elderly care provider organization has levied with the fine of 792000 pound due to incapability in protecting the personal and confidential information of the patients (Jeffrey, 2020). In the case of non-compliance or contravention by employees, a penalty of around 200000 pound to 300000 pound needs to be paid along with future cost as decided by the court. Along with the impact on healthcare provider this non compliance also results in creating issues for patients as it will leads to disease progression, lower quality of life and decease functional abilities.

Fitness to practice implies the availability of adequate knowledge, skills, health and character to undertake the practice of elderly care provider effectively and safely. It is the crucial concept in healthcare as it ensures the capability of the care provider and focuses over providing an utmost satisfaction and experiences to the elder people. There are various guidelines that should be effectively followed by each practitioner to protect the present and future of the patients. This will also help in certifying effective compliance with the requirement of regulatory and professional bodies (Karimian, Petelos and Evers, 2022). A person centred approach should be initiated which includes carefully listening to the experiences and perception of the individual and their families. This provides assistance in identifying the common issues and requirement of the entire patient based on which necessary actions could be initiated. The second principle includes efficiency of individual in promoting transparency among the elders’ people.

 A service provider should be capable in clearly communicating all the activities that they will undertake for the particular concern along with its impact on their overall health. The positive as well negative impact should be clearly conveyed to the patients that will help in maintaining clarity and aids in taking effective decision. Along with this, the healthcare provider should be able to identify all the potential risk that could impact on individual’s health and be capable in taking actions as to mitigate the impact of risk on overall wellbeing of the individual. Besides this, for effectively fit into the role of eldercare provider, a professional should be able to accept its mistakes and makes focus on undertaking measures by which the error could be rectified. It has identified that most of the eldercare provider’s deliberately cover their faults that undermine safety and overall health of the patients (Kluge, 2020). However, there are various issues that result into developing fitness to practice concern and influence overall safety of the elder people. This issue may be related to disciplinary offences, health and safety breached, Academic misconduct, failure to provide conviction and unprofessional behaviour.

Role of Healthcare Professionals in Ethical Decision Making

Decision making is the most crucial and significant process in the healthcare industry as it impacts overall physical and mental condition of the individuals. Healthcare professional are involved in monitoring the mental and physical condition of the patients on the regular basis based on which the most optimum suggestion could be provided to them. In the elderly care practice, the healthcare professional is involved in undertaking the entire routine task with the patients that helps in effectively analysing their capability which aids in taking the most effective decision (McCradden et al, 2020). This process will help in aligning the activities of the healthcare professional with the mental capability Act 2005 and thereby contributes in taking the most effective decision. The mental capability Act implies that a care provider should evaluate the patient’s ability in making choices before allowing them to take any decision.

 On the other hand, the healthcare professional provides large number of suggestions to the patients that create confusion regarding the most optimum strategies and creates obstacle in taking effective decision. Further, the healthcare professional should follow the entire ethics which will support patients in taking the most impactful decision. This ethics will help in recognising healthcare dilemmas of the patients, support in taking decision based on their values and also direct towards the most effective judgment (Naik et al, 2022). However, while promoting autonomy in the decision making, healthcare professional does not stop patients in taking the particular decision which negatively impacts the overall well-being and condition of the individual. Therefore, healthcare provider is responsible for following all the ethics and promotes autonomy but the decision which creates huge negative impact should be opposed.

 Healthcare professionals are also involved towards providing awareness regarding the challenges and issues that will arise while implementing particular decisions. This professional focused on clarifying the actual requirement of all the physical and financial resources based on which most effective decision could be initiated. However, some healthcare professional provides inaccurate information as to gain financial benefits which indicate unethical activities. For instances, some diseases could be cured through simple therapies but then also professional may suggest expensive treatment for their own financial benefits which impacts on overall trust and confidence of the patients. Another crucial role of healthcare professional in decision making process includes maintaining confidentiality regarding the patient’s condition and the decision taken for improving the same (Nittari et al, 2020). On the other hand, healthcare professional provides suggestions without having actual evidence of the benefits which will be derived from the particular decision. This unclear evidence generates confusion in the mind of the customer which eventually impacts the overall efficacy of the decision.

Ethical Challenges in Elderly Healthcare Decision-Making

An ethical challenge implies for the situation in which all the available alternatives are morally incorrect but one needs to select one of them. It is very difficult for the healthcare providers to maintain autonomy of the elder patients. Due to the cognitive impairment, an individual is unable to think critically and generally stick to one decision before carefully investigating its impact (Ethical challenges in Healthcare, 2023). This creates an ethical dilemma in decision making as according to autonomy principle individuals are allowed to take decision by their own. However, this could not be applied in some scenarios as it could create negative impact on elders’ wellbeing (Popa et al, 2021). Ethical dilemmas also arise when the individual is having an ability to understand other’s the point of view but then also seems confused while taking decision. After the in-depth explanation provided related to the condition and the major available treatment, the patients are unable to take the informed decision. In such situation, healthcare provider needs to consult with the family member regarding the issues and the patient will agree to treatment due to the family pressure.

This also results into breaching of autonomy principle as consent is provided in coercion environment and decision is taken due to external force. Further, while initiating the principle of beneficence, care provider faces an ethical dilemma when the best practice is not aligning with the wish and preference of family members (Prakash et al, 2022). For example: There are various aggressive treatments which could help in extending the life but may result in reducing quality of the life for elders. In such scenarios, the care provider face issue in taking decision as it could creates negative impact in long run. Along with this, polypharmacy is another ethical issue which creates issue in implementing Non- maleficence principle. Polypharmacy refers to the situation in which an individual needs to take more than 5 medicines in a day. This treatment is crucial for reducing the negative impact. However, in long run this creates huge impact on overall health of the individual. This creates dilemma for the eldercare provider in managing balance between the ethics and treatment.

 Along with this, there are four other challenges in effectively initiating ethical principle that includes personal bias, conflicting interest, societal pressure and the absence of clear guidelines which reduces the efficiency of the healthcare provider. Prejudices and preconceived notions result in making inconsistence decision and impact on the overall health condition. For example: healthcare provider may have contain deep seated biasness against some of the particular group in such case all the ethics will not be effectively followed (Rasheed et al, 2022). For overcoming such issue, the care provider needs to have willingness and self awareness which will help in critically analysing one’s assumption and support in overcoming all such prejudices. Moreover the conflict between the values and obligation of the individual also play a crucial role in creating ethical issues for the care provider. For example: Care provider is aware that a particular condition could be cured through minimal treatment but due to superior pressure, he needs to suggest expensive therapy to clients for increasing firm’s profits.

Ethical and Legal Principles in Elderly Healthcare

There are four crucial ethical principles that should be followed while providing healthcare services to the elderly people. This principle includes justices, non maleficence, autonomy and beneficiary which help in promoting utmost’s effective services to the patients. Beside this, two other principles that are veracity and fidelity should also be initiated by the care provider (Siala and Wang, 2022). Autonomy refers to the ability of individual to make decision by one self and emphasis over providing freedom to choose the treatment according to their preference. According to this principle, the healthcare provider should disclose the accurate condition to the patients and depict all the risk and benefits associated with the treatment.

Based on this, the care receiver is allowed to refuse the treatment which creates ethical dilemmas for the practitioners. This principle also includes the right to privacy which indicate that all the personal and materialistic information related to patients should not be disclosed with other. However this principle, could not be applied if the individual is facing any mental disorder as it will result in taking inappropriate decision and impact on overall health (Wang et al, 2023). The second ethical principal in healthcare includes the principle of beneficiary which denotes that all healthcare professional should initiate actions which will provide the best and optimum impact on the overall mental and physical health of the patients. This ethic is based on the principle of “emergency privilege” which denotes that during the time of utmost emergency a health professional is permitted to initiate actions without the consent of patients (Ethical principle in Healthcare, 2024). For instance: if the care receiver is in unconscious stage and there is no time to take consent from family member then the caretaker has the right to take necessary actions on high own. So before taking any quick decision and initiated activities, a professional is required to evaluate the decision on three factors which includes depicting patients prognosis, time required for realizing benefits and the impacts of the therapy. 

However, due to this principle the practitioners have taken various actions which were not beneficial rather increases the risk for the patients. To avoid the issue, a new ethic of non Maleficence was generated in year 1932 which indicate that in the situation of emergency, action should be initiated which does not provide any additional harm to the patients (Čartolovni, Tomičić and Mosler, 2022). This ethic indicates that before implementing any action on the care receiver one should firstly identify all the potential harm than the benefits. At the time of taking care of elder, one should make a note of all the acute and chronic disease impacting the individual. This will help in arranging all the required resources and tools, so that during emergency the most impactful measure could be initiated by the care provider. The last principle includes the justice which implies fairness and equity at the time of providing treatment.

 In this context the healthcare care provider describes the norms, values, policies and practices in which the situation of racism could occur. Along with four crucial ethic, truthfulness and trust is another crucial ethics which should be followed while providing effective care to elders. This ethics could be effectively followed by providing all the accurate information related to the patient’s condition and depict reliable measures for improving the same (Tóth, Árva and Dénes, 2020). The Health and Care Act 2022 guides the healthcare provider regarding their roles and responsibilities which assist in enhancing health condition of patients (Health and Care Act 2022, 2024). This act focuses over providing protection against all the unethical activities in healthcare and enhances individual‘s access to the healthcare facilities. Moreover, cultural competences should also be present in the healthcare provider which includes respecting and recognising the diverse background, culture, belief and values of the patients.

All the legal and ethical principle has huge impact on overall healthcare practices of the country. This practices support in ensuring that healthcare provider obtained informed consent from the patients and adhere to all the regulation while providing the services. The regulation support in guiding healthcare provider regarding the measures that should not be initiated which leads to enhancing overall efficiency of the services. This legislation supports in developing trust and confidence within patient that results in enhancing satisfaction by providing better services. Ethics in healthcare are also very crucial as this help in maintaining dignity and respect of the patient (Poquiz, 2024). This guide manager regarding the activities that should be initiated which help in safeguarding the interest of the patients. This legislation and regulation are also very crucial as it support in ensuring that healthcare professional are not initiating malpractices and negligence in their treatment. This ethic and legislation also creates awareness that if the healthcare professional is unable to meet the prescribe guideline than a serious financial consequence needs to be faced by the care providers. This framework support in confirming that ethical and legal regulation are effectively followed within the healthcare sectors that leads to developing trust and confidence of the patients.

CONCLUSION

By summing up the essay it has identified that ethical and legal regulations should be followed for providing utmost effective services to the clients. An eldercare provider should be able to follow Equality Act 2010, include in health risk reduction process, acknowledging and addressing diversity, promotes transparency for better care. Non compliance with legal requirement will results in facing penalties, fines, licence revocation and lawsuits. A person centred approach, promoting transparency, determination of risk, high acceptance level are the guidelines that need to be achieved by healthcare provider. Healthcare professional provide all the crucial information regarding the health condition and suggest various measures that could initiated for improving the situation. Further professional are involved in providing information related to all the available strategies along with their impact which aids in decision making process. 

Cognitive impartment, disagreement with patients, prejudice and preconceived information, conflicting interest is various ethical dilemmas in eldercare. Autonomy, justice, beneficiary and non maleficence are four ethical principles that need to be implemented while providing care and services to older people. This ethical principle includes provide right to patients to take their own decision, taking effective decision in case of emergency, initiating activities that reduce harm to care receiver and fostering equality and fairness in all the operations.

REFERENCES

Books and Journals

• Čartolovni, A., Tomičić, A. and Mosler, E.L., 2022. Ethical, legal, and social considerations of AI-based medical decision-support tools: A scoping review. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 161, p.104738.
• Char, D.S., Abràmoff, M.D. and Feudtner, C., 2020. Identifying ethical considerations for machine learning healthcare applications. The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(11), pp.7-17.
• Farrell, T.W., Francis, L., Brown, T., Ferrante, L.E., Widera, E., Rhodes, R., Rosen, T., Hwang, U., Witt, L.J., Thothala, N. and Liu, S.W., 2020. Rationing limited healthcare resources in the COVID‐19 era and beyond: ethical considerations regarding older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 68(6), pp.1143-1149.
• Jeffrey, D.I., 2020. Relational ethical approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of medical ethics, 46(8), pp.495-498.
• Karimian, G., Petelos, E. and Evers, S.M., 2022. The ethical issues of the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare: a systematic scoping review. AI and Ethics, 2(4), pp.539-551.
• Kluge, E.H.W., 2020. Ethical and legal challenges for health telematics in a global world: telehealth and the technological imperative. In The Ethical Challenges of Emerging Medical Technologies (pp. 223-227). Routledge.
• McCradden, M.D., Joshi, S., Anderson, J.A., Mazwi, M., Goldenberg, A. and Zlotnik Shaul, R., 2020. Patient safety and quality improvement: Ethical principles for a regulatory approach to bias in healthcare machine learning. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(12), pp.2024-2027.
• Naik, N., Hameed, B.Z., Shetty, D.K., Swain, D., Shah, M., Paul, R., Aggarwal, K., Ibrahim, S., Patil, V., Smriti, K. and Shetty, S., 2022. Legal and ethical consideration in artificial intelligence in healthcare: who takes responsibility?. Frontiers in surgery, 9, p.862322.
• Naik, N., Hameed, B.Z., Shetty, D.K., Swain, D., Shah, M., Paul, R., Aggarwal, K., Ibrahim, S., Patil, V., Smriti, K. and Shetty, S., 2022. Legal and ethical consideration in artificial intelligence in healthcare: who takes responsibility?. Frontiers in surgery, 9, p.862322.
• Nittari, G., Khuman, R., Baldoni, S., Pallotta, G., Battineni, G., Sirignano, A., Amenta, F. and Ricci, G., 2020. Telemedicine practice: review of the current ethical and legal challenges. Telemedicine and e-Health, 26(12), pp.1427-1437.
• Popa, E.O., van Hilten, M., Oosterkamp, E. and Bogaardt, M.J., 2021. The use of digital twins in healthcare: socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks. Life sciences, society and policy, 17, pp.1-25.
• Poquiz, W., 2024. Navigating the Risks of Artificial Intelligence Foundation Models in Healthcare: How Health Systems Can Respond. TWU Student Journal, 3(1).
• Prakash, S., Balaji, J.N., Joshi, A. and Surapaneni, K.M., 2022. Ethical Conundrums in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare—a scoping review of reviews. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 12(11), p.1914.
• Rasheed, K., Qayyum, A., Ghaly, M., Al-Fuqaha, A., Razi, A. and Qadir, J., 2022. Explainable, trustworthy, and ethical machine learning for healthcare: A survey. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 149, p.106043.
• Siala, H. and Wang, Y., 2022. SHIFTing artificial intelligence to be responsible in healthcare: A systematic review. Social Science & Medicine, 296, p.114782.
• Tóth, Z.E., Árva, G. and Dénes, R.V., 2020. Are the ‘illnesses’ of traditional Likert scales treatable?. Quality Innovation Prosperity, 24(2), pp.120-136.
• Wang, C., Liu, S., Yang, H., Guo, J., Wu, Y. and Liu, J., 2023. Ethical considerations of using ChatGPT in health care. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, p.e48009.

Online

• Ethical challenges in Healthcare. 2023. Online. Available through: < https://online.uttyler.edu/degrees/business/mba/healthcare-management/ethical-issues-in-healthcare/>
• Ethical principle in Healthcare. 2024. Online. Available through: < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7923912/>
• Health and Care Act 2022. 2024. Online. Available through: < https://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2022/31>
• Need of Elder healthcare provider. 2023. Online. Available through: < https://docville.in/blog/importance-of-home-care-services-for-the-elderly#:~:text=Elders%20after%20a%20certain%20age,drug%20ingested%20by%20the%20patient.>
• The Equality Act 2010. 2023. Online. Available through: < https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents>

Author Bio

Alex Taylor   5 Years | PHD

My name is Alex and I have acquired my PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. I received A+ grades in all my semesters and always got appreciated for my assignments. I am also the author of several engineering research papers that have received quite good recognition. I am a expert writer who wants to guide students in writing excellent engineering assignments.