Integrity and Ethical Issues for Health Professionals
Hospitals find it hard to protect patients from wrong-site surgery.
Last year a jury returned a $20 million negligence verdict against
Arkansas Children’s Hospital for surgery performed on the wrong side
of the brain of a 15-year-old boy who was left psychotic and severely
brain damaged. Testimony showed that the error was not disclosed to
his parents for more than a year. The hospital issued a statement
saying it deeply regretted the error and had “redoubled our efforts to
prevent” a recurrence.
So, what happened? “Health care has far too little accountability for
results … . All the pressures are on the side of production; that’s how
you get paid,” said Peter Pronovost, a prominent safety expert and
medical director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovation in Quality
Patient Care. He added that increased pressure to quickly turn over
operating rooms has trumped patient safety, increasing the chance of
error.
Kenneth W. Kizer, who coined the term “never event” nearly a
decade ago when he headed the National Quality Forum, a leading
patient safety organization, said he believes reducing the number of
errors will require tougher reporting rules and increased
transparency.
***Assignment Discussion Questions***
1. Discuss the issues of integrity in this case.
2. Should criminal charges be considered in this case, if accurately reported? Discuss your answer.
3. Why did you choose to respond to this story?
4. How is integrity displayed in your clinical setting?
Integrity and Ethical Issues for Health Professionals
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Integrity and Ethical Issues for Health Professionals
The case presents a lack of integrity from the Arkansas Children Hospital surgeons who wrongly operated on the boy. Pozgar (2019) defines integrity as the rigid adherence to ethical or strict moral codes and the commitment of not compromising the codes. Health care professionals and patients usually make health care decisions based on their strict moral beliefs and integrity; a person lacking personal integrity fails to meet the ethical and moral beliefs. The surgeons who operated on the boy wrongly should have had a moral obligation to ensure that the right information was available before they start the operation. Due to their qualified training, they were expected to ensure no harm could happen to the child when the operation was carried out.
Integrity is concerned with accountability and reliability. The wrong side operation illustrates cases of failure of the surgeons to portray accountability since they knew they had made an error while operating. Still, they did not inform the family at the right time. Accountability and honesty are good virtues for health professionals to act and follow up on ethical guidelines. The hospital surgeons were supposed to take up the mistake of operating the child wrongly, then find the solution and rectify the error before the damage became severe (Pozgar, 2019).
Surgeons and other health professionals take an oath of office to protect and take care of the life of their patients. The surgeons at Arkansas Children Hospital never adhered to the oath of protecting people's lives when they performed wrong side surgery. Further, they did not disclose the error to the parent for more than a year. This was inappropriat...