Ethics and Health

Here we are dealing with two entities ethics and health. One is a
tangible and obvious thing health, the other rather abstract, ethics.
Whenever we talk of these two terms together What comes to our
mind or rings in our ears? And why?
What comes to our mind is that personally every individual must
ensure to take good care of his health without abusing it and ethically
equally ensure health care of others or adopt ethical ways and means
in dealing with health governance. Why? because we as a civilized
society must take the responsibility of ensuring primarily a sound
physical health care and equally the psychological well being of every
individual in our surrounding.

Without getting into the quagmire of jargon studded specifics let us

analyze what is ethics? And what is ethical behavior? And how does it
play a part in health care industry with all the players involved in it
starting from the patient to the paramedical force to doctors to
insurance agents etc .

What is ethics?

Ethics refers to values and principles that define behavior as right,

wrong, moral and proper. Such values and principles provide a means
of evaluation and decision making based on those evaluation to
choose among the several available, obvious and probable and
competing options

There are too many relative terminologies here that defy logical
uniformity and universal applicability and hence it is very difficult to
frame any type of policy or regulation which can answer all the above
mentioned aspects namely what constitutes as right, wrong, moral ,
proper in all societies. However, the value and principles can be
broadly based on following categories:- psychological, sociological,
cultural, political, economic environmental, physical , technological,
philosophical and scientific. But there must not be any unjustifiable
presumption that principles and values are amenable to
homogenization, there must not be the wrong approach of
generalizing the particular and particularizing the general, then we
must also avoid using statistical data as a tool for vindicating certain
principles or values.

The very values and principles can be categorized but cannot be

homogenized because it varies from society to society, one place to
another , one religious group to another and so on. So health care and
administration issues, however well intended they may be, have to
take into consideration the socio psycho cultural milieu where they
are being addressed to. For example if you do not inform the kith and
kin about a health problem in India it is an offense whereas in USA
you do not have the right to inform without the consent of the patient.
Abortion in certain places is a crime whereas it is almost a daily sport
in certain places.

So like morality, ethical values do differ from environment to

environment, descent, common adaptation etc. So also even the
genetic and biological make of the physic of individuals. Therefore
ethics and health is rather environment specific issue. There have
been several cases where different populations were immune to
certain diseases because of their unique genetic make up whereas
some others where more susceptible to certain disorders again
because of their unique genetic make up. Just to site two examples
some African tribes have been said to have certain genes which make
them immune to blood cancer similarly there are certain ethnic group
in India for whom certain anesthetic drugs when injected lead to their
death.

However as mentioned earlier it is equally imperative that there exists

some system or rule or law that is applicable and that can regulate
and ensure that ethically proper health care is in place. It involves a
collective display of all those things that govern social behavior in
general like customs, traditions, ethics, law, religio morality etc

There are therefore various steps involved in implementing ethical

health care basically and broadly they are for steps in Ethical
Healthcare Decision Making.

They are :-Assessment, Plan, Evaluation and Implementation.

Assessment involves visioning, mentoring, monitoring, solution
focused critical thinking, self awareness, system and practice review.

Plan involves facilitation, enabling health care teams’ research or

development plan learning pathways.

Evaluation involves risk management, environment friendly practice,

learning in and through practice, building block for practice.

Implementation involves communication, support of all involved in

implementation and interdisciplinary sharing expertise.

The advantage of this classification is it minimizes the problems

involved in making ethical choices between equally undesirable
alternative courses of action, the consequent valid judgments about
action and resource allocation based on the clarity of the steps
involved. Process is also faster when we can choose the best actions to
meet a desired goal from among the several mutually exclusive
choices which are always popping up.

But all these must work on some basic premises like patient and his
well being have an important value which must be respected and
enhanced by all participants in health care decisions.

Thus ethical health is a very complex issue, it will be further

complicated if we try to operate it based on any typical western
homogenized universal applications. On the contrary it will be easily
carried out if we adapt an environment specific approach and execute
it