Case Study of Michael and Tifania

Week 7 Assignment: Case Study of Michael and Tifania Your Name Capella University BUS3121: Ethics in Healthcare Management Instructor’s Name Due Date [Month, Day, Year] Case Study of Michael and Tifania This paper analyses a complicated ethical and management case study of Michael as given. Michael, a comatose patient at Brookside Hospital, is the center of a dispute between his wife, Tifanía, and father, Chris, regarding end-of-life decision-making. This scenario pushes healthcare administrator Jenny Baluyot to immediately deal with a family conflict, examine staff behaviour, and see to it that the hospital provides ethical and legal patient care and support. This investigation will apply a formal ethical decision-making framework to give clarity to the problem and ethical dilemma. It will also identify the primary decision-makers and all internal and external stakeholders, as well as listing the violated ethical principles and relevant non-moral concerns. Finally, it will explore several possible options that Ms. Baluyot can adopt to ethically resolve the situation based on concepts and principles studied in health care ethics and literature. The Problem and Ethical Conflict The main problem with Brookside Hospital and with Ms. Baluyot specifically is a catastrophic failure of policy and communication regarding Michael’s care and end-of-life decisions. The patient is in a coma so the issue lies with identification and communication with his legally entitled surrogate decision-maker. Chris, the father of Michael, and Tifanía, the spouse of Michael, are in a serious disagreement. Part of this disagreement stemmed from the hospital’s decisions on the matter. Instead of Tifanía, who is Michael’s spouse and emergency contact, the hospital reached out to Chris who was physically there. Bearing the latitude that the hospital provided, Chris subsequently engaged in making medical decisions, for example, keeping Michael on a ventilator for almost a month, a medical process Michael supposedly spoke very vocally about not wanting due to his history of anesthetic use and generally sick status. To make matters worse, Chris informed the staff that Michael and Tifanía were actually divorced. As a result, the staff would not provide Tifanía with any information, even after she showed proof of marriage. The events happening here amount to a serious ethical clash due to conflicting duties and rights. The argument challenges Michael’s wishes because the surrogate is undocumented. Luna-Meza et al. (2021) assert that the spouse’s legal rights must be weighed up against the advantage of deferring to the choice of the family member who is present. This instance clearly breaches the duty to ensure that medical decisions are made properly and ethically. As per the findings of Nayfeh et al. (2022), under the normal legal circumstances, the spouse should make the end-of-life decision on behalf of an incapacitated loved one. In the absence of a spouse, adult children can be considered before parents are accorded the opportunity. The case of Michael is an ethical conflict both because the surrogate is unverified and the fact that the patient has been subjected to a treatment that he would not approve. The case also highlights some policy or administrative problems. That is, the hospital has not made it clear on what policies or principles to guide the practitioners on how to address end-of-life decisions. The ignorance showcased by the multidisciplinary team spiraled into the exposure of ethical and administrative gaps. Decision Maker and Stakeholders Stakeholders and decision-makers in this case can be cl...