Ethical and Cultural Challenges to Engage in Advance Care Planning

Ethical and Cultural Challenges to Engagement in Advance Care Planning
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Ethical and Cultural Challenges to Engagement in Advance Care Planning
Part a
According to Morrison et al. (2021), advance care planning (ACP) is not something that should be embraced by the older population only. Instead, it is something that the entire community should embrace, regardless of gender, religion, or race. A medical crisis is likely to occur at any stage of one's life, and it could leave one too ill to make a decision about their own health care decision. ACP entails individuals learning about various decisions that need to be made in the case of a given health care condition, making a decision, and letting others know. Carr & Luth (2017) demonstrate that the use of ACP enables individuals to talk to their doctors and loved ones about end-of-life care preferences. To ensure that people get to make decisions about what they would like done as their end-of-life care, policies should get formulated at the community level to create an environment conducive for ACP. The paper will discuss the ethical and cultural changes in embracing ACP tsing various peer-reviewed journal articles.
ACP impact on the local community
In China, ACP tools are still not recognized as a common perspective to adopt. People assume that taking or even thinking about death is sacrilegious in my community. As a result, many Chinese families are affected and show a lower intention to report their "bad" prognosis or diagnosis, which may hinder the opportunity for early care plan discussion. Additionally, many people in my community do not engage in any planning tools until they are very ill. In most cases, the family members are left with the burden of
deciding on what should be done. When one acquires a life-threatening condition, they rely on their family members to take care of them and make decisions on what should be done. The dire effects of not embracing ACP are that it causes unwanted stress, which, if not well managed, can lead to mental issues in the family.
According to Carr and Luth (2017), when family members have to decide about the end-of-life care of their loved ones, a lot of financial loss may be experienced as they want to ensure their loved one's life. Additionally, a lot of family wrangles may arise due to differences of opinion on what should be done for their loved ones. However, a few groups of individuals are starting to embrace ACP. Nevertheless, this is a very small percentage as most people deem ACP as something that should not be promoted.
Diversity and Culture in Relation to ACP
Morrison et al. (2021) show that various diversity factors influence whether people embrace ACP or not. The first factor that influences whether people accept ACP is religion. According to Carr & Luth (2017), religious individuals believe that the creator decides what happens to their lives and that no man has the power to choose whether to take or preserve life. However, this is not the case for most unreligious people. Carr & Luth (2017) demonstrate that the largest group of people that embrace ACP are unreligious compared to the religious. Secondly, culture has a significant role in how people view ACP. In a culture where talking about death is taboo, most people tend to shy away from talking about what they would like done (Klingler et al., 2016). Therefore, in a culture where people are taught to embrace death and that there is life after death, many people are willing to accept various planning tools.
The other factor that greatly influences how people view ACP is race. According to Carr & Luth (2017), the largest percentages of people likely to embrace ACP are whites. However, only a tiny percentage of black people embrace ACP for various cultural reasons. Thus, because of the belief that talking about death attracts evil spirits in various African cultures, most people are likely to avoid using the pla...