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Chapter 25 - Ethics Committees and Distributive Justice

from Section 3 - Policy Development and Organizational Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2022

By
Nancy S. Jecker
Edited by
D. Micah Hester  and
Toby L. Schonfeld
D. Micah Hester
Affiliation:
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, College of Medicine
Toby L. Schonfeld
Affiliation:
National Center for Ethics in Health Care, US Department of Veterans Affairs
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Summary

This case raises a number of complex ethical questions for the HEC. When patients are unable to comply with best medical advice because they simply cannot afford the treatments prescribed, what should physicians do? To what extent are health professionals responsible for knowing about their patients’ social and economic circumstances before prescribing a treatment plan? Does the patient have a responsibility to share such information? Is a hospital, which may be inundated with requests for financial assistance from the community it serves, obligated to help care for uninsured and underserved individuals? In the case of Mr. Nguyen, although the cost of providing needed wound dressing may seem minimal, what if many surgical patients served by the hospital need this kind of help? Are we, as a society, responsible for helping Mr. Nguyen and other patients who are uninsured and underserved to obtain needed health care?

Type
Chapter
Information
Guidance for Healthcare Ethics Committees , pp. 219 - 227
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. (2017). Declaration of Professional Responsibility: Medicine’s Social Contract with Humanity. https://policysearch.ama-assn.org/policyfinder/detail/medical%20ethic?uri=%2FAMADoc%2FHOD.xml-0-431.xmlGoogle Scholar
American Nursing Association, (2001). Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretative Statements. www.princetonhcs.org/-/media/princeton/documentrepository/documentrepository/nurses/code-of-ethics.pdfGoogle Scholar
Berlinger, N, Zacharias, RL (2019). Resources for teaching and learning about immigrant health care in health professions education. AMA Journal of Ethics, 21(1): E50–E57.Google Scholar
Chen, PW (2010, February 5). When the patient can’t afford the care. New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/health/04chen.htmlGoogle Scholar
Jecker, NS (1990). Integrating professional ethics with normative theory: Patient advocacy and social responsibility. Theoretical Medicine, 11(2): 125–139.Google Scholar
Jecker, NS (2008). A broader view of justice. American Journal of Bioethics, 8(10): 2–10.Google Scholar
Kuczewski, M (2019). Clinical ethicists awakened: Addressing two generations of clinical ethics issues involving undocumented patients. American Journal of Bioethics, 19(4): 51–57.Google Scholar
Schiff, GD (2013). Crossing boundaries – violation or obligation? JAMA, 310(12): 1233–1234.Google Scholar

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