Ethics That I See

For my final blog, I have chosen to write about an ethical issue that I have seen on the news today. I know the news can exaggerate stories; however I still think that this issue has many ethical violations both in healthcare and beyond. With all the economic problems I keep hearing about and all shortages in the budgets around the country I have to ask myself one question. What CEO or manager of any company feels that they can justify giving themselves a raise?! For example, the unemployment rate continues to increase yet some managers and company executives still get raises. I find this extremely disturbing for multiple reasons. First, where is the compassion for your fellow citizen? Do company executives realize that when they fire people they are firing human beings with families? Second, and kind of selfishly, I have to state that many of my co-workers and myself and not seen a raise in well over three years, even though managers and higher-ups get raises. So I guess what I am trying to say through all this rambling is why? I am at a loss. If one CEO would even try to be a tiny bit utilitarianistic and think about the country as a whole I feel that there would be no problem. If he or she gets a $500,000 raise for example and turned it down the company could hire ten more employees and pay them $50,000 each with that money! I know that seems like nothing but if every company and hospital executive did this I feel that it would put a great dent in our economic problem. These people with their new jobs would go out and spend their money and the growth as I see it would be endless. Maybe my idea is a bit utopian in design and more than likely will not happen because let’s be honest, how many people do you know that have turned down a raise? All I can do from my limited position is write about it and hope someone with a greater power then I realizes that something is ethically and morally not right about all of this. I love this country and I know this is how capitalism works, however there is something not right when one man starves while another gets an exorbitant amount of money for putting that starving man in that position.

Ethics in Jail Healthcare

I was very interested to learn that we were going to have a guest speaker in class. I think it adds a nice touch to any class, keeps students interested and just plain changes things up. The speaker we had from the Lake County Jail was quite interesting. It opened my eyes to the ethical issues that can plague a jail, issues that never came to mind when I think health care in a jail. I didn’t think that health care in a jail would go beyond the basic emergency needs of an inmate. I now know that everything from dental to mental health is available to inmates. I also was quite amazed at the level of patient autonomy that was preserved in this limited privacy setting. Quarantine is available for many patients should there be an outbreak of an illness. Privacy is kept to a very high regard and so is control of all medicines and medical supplies in the facility. I cannot say that I myself would be fit or willing to work for a jail, however the way it is run is quite intriguing. The similarities, according to the speaker, seemed very similar to any other medical facility. The only man difference I saw was when there is an emergency medical staff is not the first on the scene. The guards must first secure the area before staff is allowed to proceed in. This seems to present some ethical issues in that it puts the provider before the patient, however in this case I would have to say that it seems like a perfectly acceptable bending of ethical standards.

Stamford Prison Experiment

The Stamford prison experiment had to be one of the most preventable violations of ethics that I have seen throughout this entire class. When I first started watching the video about this experiment, I thought that the directors of the experiment had done a good job in installing camera that would supervise the experiment and allow them to interfere and stop things that were not right. However, this proved to be no help. The directors of the experiment ended up losing control of their own experiment. They allowed patient autonomy, and nonmaleficence to be violated. I know that even in a prison experiment, the patients must have known that they were going to lose some control, however the amount on control lost and the realism of the experiment fell way beyond the realm of an experiment.

The director of the experiment, by his own account, got “caught up” in the experiment. He probably thought that as long as no one is physically hurt then there is no harm done. As seen in the video however, he failed to take into account the psychological effects that the realism of the prison experiment would present to the guards and the prisoners. The guards, I believe, literally believed they were in a real prison and dealing with real criminals. They not only treated all of the prisoners harshly, but some inhumanly. They locked the prisoners in a dark closet that was supposed to be solitary confinement on more than one occasion. They kept food from them, and when some chose not to eat they just let them go hungry. This is clearly breaking nonmaleficence because these people could have starved to death. This is something that should not have been done and where the experiment should have stopped.

I feel that autonomy as informed consent of the prisoners in this experiment was also violated. This is for the pure and simple fact that I am sure they did not consent to be put into a dark closet, having basic amenities taken away and to be kept hungry at times. I would hope that no one would be that desperate for money and I would also like to think that this was not part of the legal document and consent form. This of course is assuming that there was even a consent form handed out originally. I also feel that it was extremely unethical when they were told that they could not leave even if they wanted to. This is clearly going against their wishes and not allowing the people involved in the experiment to have informed consent. I hope that in the future things like this experiment can be avoided. I hope that we have learned from this and will never allow it to be repeated again.

Values Auction

The auction that we did in class recently was a great example of how we as a group put prices on certain things that we consider valuable. It was interesting to see that the most valuable thing in our class was a “happy marriage”. It out sold items that I would have considered more valuable such as the “cure for AIDS” and “world peace”. I guess I really should not be surprised because some people do believe that the interests and needs of self do tend to outweigh the interests and needs of others. Also it seems that people who have friends and family that are affected by certain things tend to put more value on them. For example, I am sure a parent or relative of a soldier who is at war would have put down all their money on “world peace”. There are some circumstances that I believe led to some error in this in class experiment. First, we all knew this was for fun, we knew it would not have an effect on real life and more than likely this caused us not to put our full ethical feelings into this. Also, I believe that the fact that a happy marriage was at the end of the list of auction items affected the value that it gained. I noticed that a great deal of people did not bid on anything until the end of the auction.

I felt that I learned a lot of this auction. I learned that it is actually really hard to determine what you value most when you have limited resources with which to obtain those values. I felt like I wanted to help others, but I kind of had this internal thought that “I want a little something for myself too”. This leads me to believe that to be truly ethical and generous you must put all of your personal inhibitions aside and focus on the ethics, needs and wants of others. I don’t want people use utilitarianism, that would be taking too far, but a little selflessness can go a long way to help others.

President Obama's Health Care Speech

A few weeks ago I decided to DVR the presidents speech on health care reform. The constant back and forth debates on the different news channels had become irritating and I wanted to hear the truth about the reform from the source. As I began listening to the speech and taking mental notes on what topics the president was covering, I realized that he had made a great argument in support of the reform. He covered how he planned on paying for it, who was going to be covered, how it would help our national deficit and how it would effect us here in the United States. However, there are also a few points that I feel he missed. One of the biggest things I feel he missed was the topic of demand. When this reform does go through and all the uninsured people in the country now have health insurance, how is our health care system going to handle the influx of forty-five million new customers?! It scared me that this rather huge topic was not brought up at all. I have not even seen any news media showing any concern over the demand that health care is going to take on, which is kind of interesting because they are usually reporting everything, everywhere especially on hot topic issues like this. Another issue I feel that was not covered was the effect this reform would have on health care workers. I understand that the patients comes first, but health care workers also need to know what is going to happen to them. Is there pay going to be affected? Is there a danger of people loosing certain jobs? If there is going to be a lack of consideration for the employees of health care then won't that have an effect on patients care as well? These are the questions and issues that I feel need to be answered first. I am sure there are a great deal more questions that I did not consider, but I feel that the issues I mentioned are very important. I consider my self a liberal person and am very open minded to new ideas such as this health care reform, but this needs to be done right! If this reform is not done right, not only will it waste a great deal of money but it will make it next to impossible to pass any future health reform in this country for a very long time.