Medical facilities can only offer quality services once healthcare practitioners embrace the rules that govern their professional conduct and follow the state rules in the delivery of safe and quality services to patients. Legal issues aim to ensure safety in delivering quality services to the sick, thus ensuring that it attains its ultimate goal of saving lives. Alternatively, work ethics aims to ensure effective workplace collaboration and coordination, thus enabling healthcare practitioners to deliver their services in a conducive environment. Healthcare is a delicate sector that requires every employee to handle their duties carefully while consulting one another to provide better and safe treatment services to the sick. This essay examines the legal aspects of keeping the record and provides an in-depth analysis of ethical and legal issues that focuses on providing quality medical services.
Legal issues in documenting informed consent
Informed consent is the process whereby a patient learns and understands the risks, benefits, and purpose of a medical procedure and agrees to acquire treatment or actively participate in a clinical trial. Patients have the freedom to decide what should be done to their bodies and gather credible information before getting involved in a particular medical process (Kaplan, 2020). There is no individual or a professional in the medical fraternity with permission to force a patient to receive a certain medical procedure, trial, or treatment. Healthcare providers only help the patient by enlightening them about various treatment procedures, risks, and benefits, but only the patients would decide what should be done to their bodies (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021). The following are legal considerations in the documentation of informed consent.
The soundness of the patient’s mind: Patients have the right to determine what should be done in their bodies but must have a sound mind before medical practitioners can adhere to their decisions. In case the patients are of unsound mind, the medical practitioners may take certain treatment procedures to save the lives of the sick if no adult is accompanying the patient (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021). In such cases, doctors would not face any legal process if the treatment offered adversely affected the patients as they applied their utmost professionalism in treating them.
Pre-existing conditions of the patients: Patients should provide adequate and accurate information before getting involved in the certain medical process, especially when the physicians are explaining the potential risks (Paul-Emile et al., 2020). For instance, some patients may be allergic to different drugs and should share such information with the healthcare provider. If patients’ situations worsen after treatment due to comorbidities they did not share with the medical practitioners, the healthcare facilities are not liable for the outcome.
Ethical releasing of treatment and assessment records
High professionalism in elaborating on the risks, side effects, and benefits of particular medical interventions. Healthcare providers should outline the necessary information that patients require before deciding on the nature of the treatment they may require from the medical facility (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021). Through a vivid elaboration of the risks and potential outcomes of different medical interventions, healthcare providers may help patients make uncompromised decisions. By assessing medical records, physicians can outline better medical interventions to help the patient recover. Doctors’ role is to help patients make effective decisions on different medical interventions.
Enforceable standards
Safety: Medical practitioners should consider the safety of certain medical interventions before providing services to patients. Patients may decide to undergo medical interventions that might have serious repercussions due to their health conditions. In such a situation, healthcare providers would share the potential risks with the patient’s family and suggest better medication to help the sick recover (Kaplan, 2020). Such a decision is legal, but doctors are prohibited from making personal decisions on specific medical interventions for patients.
Critical consideration: During emergencies, healthcare providers are legally allowed to take effective decisions and offer fast and necessary medical interventions to save a patient’s life (Maffoni et al., 2019). In such cases, consulting the patient’s family is prohibited since there is minimal time. However, a fast, professional response in specific medical interventions is required to save a life.
Rationale of proposed actions
Risk minimization: Taking due consideration in ensuring the medical interventions taken are safe and would possibly positively impact the patient’s health aims at minimizing risks of unfavorable outcomes. Medical professionalism and expertise aid doctors in rendering necessary support to patients and their families in choosing the best medical intervention (Paul-Emile et al., 2020). Provision of quality services to patients and risk reduction of possible adverse outcomes is an ethical consideration of healthcare providers.
Lifesaving: The core objective of emergency services is to save a life within the shortest time possible. Therefore, limited time hinders the possibility of lengthy negotiations and risks elaboration (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021). Medical ethics allows healthcare providers to effectively apply their utmost professional expertise to save patients’ lives.
Evaluation of legal issues in professional psychology
Discrimination: In line with psychological professionalism, offering medical interventions to patients unfairly through exercising discrimination is illegal. Provision of fair and quality psychological services to all patients regardless of their gender, religion and race is the ultimate objective in professional psychology (Kaplan, 2020). Discrimination is highly prohibited, and healthcare providers violating such rules should face legal proceedings individually.
Negligence: Workplace competence is critical for all psychologists, and should always promptly respond to patients’ needs and concerns. Laziness and reluctance to provide necessary treatment to patients should never be tolerated (Maffoni et al., 2019). Strict disciplinary action should always be taken against psychologists who do not focus on the delivery of quality services to patients.
Legal issues in documenting, assessment, testing, and diagnosis
Incompetence: Medical practitioners should be competent and careful in recording patients’ medical histories to ensure proper testing and effective diagnosis. Such levels of competence help physicians to explain possible medical interventions to patients that may help them to recover (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021). Thus incompetence of the healthcare providers should never be tolerated since it may result in poor services to the patients and could also result in loss of life if poor documentation is done. Strict supervision is one of the effective measures that the management of any healthcare facility should embrace since legal proceedings would only discipline-specific professionals. However, supervision creates a habit of remaining competent and delivery of quality services to patients.
Workplace conflict: Healthcare facility delivers quality services to the patients if the service providers have a conducive working relationship. Workplace conflicts result in a lack of coordination and collaboration amongst the medical practitioners, thus providing poor services to patients (Kaplan, 2020). Since medical facilities deal with saving people’s lives, a peaceful working environment is paramount, and the leadership should solve any internal matter effectively before it affects the quality of services delivered. Pace-setting leadership strategies should be applied to the facility to ensure that the entire healthcare providers are actively involved in their roles and are consulting their colleagues to improve the quality of services to patients (Paul-Emile et al., 2020). Finally, strict legal action should always be taken to medical providers who instigate conflicts within the healthcare facility.
Rationale of proposed actions
Maximization of quality of services delivered to the patients: Strict supervision would trigger the majority of the healthcare providers to improve their interactions with the leadership and consult often. Therefore the quality of services offered to patients would improve since they would render necessary medical interventions to the patients, thus improving the quality of medical services (Martinez-Martin et al., 2021). Delivery of quality services would trigger positive publicity for the healthcare facility from the patients and their families.
Conducive working environment: Pace-setting leadership would trigger the healthcare providers to remain focused on their assigned duties and consult one another on delicate decisions within the facility (Maffoni et al., 2019). Such interactions result in a collaborative and coordinated working environment, thus enabling the entire professionals to handle their duties uniquely. A conducive environment results in minimal workplace mistakes, thus enabling healthcare facilities to attain their ultimate goal of saving lives effectively.
Legal rules governing health facilities trigger medical practitioners to make informed decisions in providing necessary medical interventions to patients. Patients have the right to assess the medical report and seek clarification from the medical practitioners before undergoing any medical intervention. However, doctors and other physicians should help the patients make informed consent since their duty is not to persuade the sick to make particular decisions but to support them. Effective management is the benchmark of enabling medical facilities to deliver the best services to the patients since setting proper rules would make all professionals remain engaged in their roles. Creation of a conducive working environment triggers a highly collaborative and coordinative relationship between the management and medical practitioners, thus developing unique skills in meeting patients’ expectations. Conclusively, healthcare providers should embrace the prescribed codes of conduct in delivering patient services.
References
Kaplan, B. (2020). Revisiting health information technology ethical, legal, and social issues and evaluation: telehealth/telemedicine and COVID-19. International journal of medical informatics, p. 143, 104239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104239
Maffoni, M., Argentero, P., Giorgi, I., Hynes, J., & Giardini, A. (2019). Healthcare professionals’ moral distress in adult palliative care: a systematic review. BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, 9(3), 245-254.doi:10.1136/bmjspcare-2018-001674
Martinez-Martin, N., Luo, Z., Kaushal, A., Adeli, E., Haque, A., Kelly, S. S., … & Milstein, A. (2021). Ethical issues in using ambient intelligence in healthcare settings. The Lancet Digital Health, 3(2), e115-e123. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30275-2
Paul-Emile, K., Critchfield, J. M., Wheeler, M., de Bourmont, S., & Fernandez, A. (2020). Addressing patient bias toward health care workers: recommendations for medical centers. Annals of internal medicine, 173(6), 468–473. https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-0176
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