Ethical and Policy Factors in Care Coordination
NURS FPX 4050 Assessment 2 Attempt 1 Ethical and Policy Factors in Care Coordination
In the field of medicine, ethical policies and ethical principles need to be given a fair share of consideration. A slight misbalance due to ethical conundrums can result in the downfall of the patient, which all medical personnel seek to avoid. In order to provide a clear understanding of these ethical policies, the American Nursing Association (ANA) chalked out certain ethical principles for nurses which imply an obligation on the nurses to adhere to these ethical policies. The ANA chalked out 4 basic ethical principles that formulate the domain for the code of ethics for nurses (Gaines, 2021).
When it comes to devising a care coordination plan for patients, merely prescribing medications and some physical activities are not sufficient. In order to ensure effective care and treatment of a patient, individualized patient-centered care coordination plans need to be drafted to focus on the care of the patients. One important aspect to note is that these care coordination plans need to follow an ethical outline so that it ensures that the patients are treated under an ethical envelope. Any negligence in the implementation of these ethical principles can result in adverse effects on the patient.
In this report, the ethical and policy factors in Rehabilitation Centers are discussed. Rehab centers are the central powerhouses that work on the treatment and care of patients who have reached a severe stage in their medical calamity. The sole purpose of rehab centers is to focus on the well-being of the patients by ensuring that they are affiliated with a healthy and ethically accepted environment that promotes both their physical as well as their mental health. The goal of this paper and this presentation is to highlight the ethical factors and policies that need to be deployed in the rehab centers to ensure the effective implementation of the care coordination plans for the patients.
How Governmental Policies Affect the Care Coordination
In rehabilitation centers, certain ethical policies need to be strictly followed to ensure the progress of the mental state of the patient. A patient’s mental state significantly deteriorates when they are admitted into the rehab center. In such a scenario, the patient can become agitating and a little difficult to handle. Under such circumstances, not only do the nurses need to portray extreme levels of patience, but they also need to observe strict binding to the provided ethical principles so that no filtration occurs in the treatment and in the care coordination plan of the patient.
In the United States, currently, there are 15000+ rehab facilities working on the care and treatment of patients, and a significant portion of patients in rehab centers meet an unfortunate end due to the negligence of the ethical policies by the nurses working in the rehab centers. For the sake of limiting the number of adverse events in patients in rehab centers, the government of the United States devised the American Nursing Association (ANA) which solely focuses on drafting ethical guidelines which nurses need to observe while treating the patients in rehab centers.
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These ethical principles proposed by the ANA are covered under four aspects – autonomy, beneficence, justice, and non-maleficence. Under the first factor, autonomy, it bides the nurses into the ethical policy that prior to taking any action in the care coordination plan, nurses need to respect and recognize the decision-making ability of the patient. Instead of deploying a care coordination scheme on the patient, nurses should instead take into account the reservations of the patient before making any decision.
NURS FPX 4050 Assessment 2 Attempt 1 Ethical and Policy Factors in Care Coordination
The second factor which ANA directs the nurses’ focus on is beneficence. This factor highlights the fact that nurses need to reflect a behavior of utmost kindness and patience towards their patient. Patients in rehab centers can often become aggressive but the ethical policies of ANA restrict the nurses that they need to treat the patient with patience and kindness. Another alarming factor that the ANA pours light on is justice. It basically states that nurses should not develop feelings of bias or prejudice against a patient. They should treat all patients equally with topmost care to successfully fulfill their role as the caretaker of the patient. The last ethical policy which ANA emphasizes is non-maleficence. This restricts the nurses in the ethical paradigm that no matter what the prevailing circumstances are, the nurses will not harm the patient or deploy any adverse effects on the patient during the care coordination scheme.
The government of the United States declares that any failure to adhere to the ethical factors and policies charted by the ANA will result in snatching the nursing rights from the said nurse. The government of the United States values the care continuum of its patients above all, failure or negligence towards following the ethical principles may result in a strict investigation.
The HIPAA Act establishes critical requirements for rehabilitative therapies. A further ground-breaking policy is the Hospitals Readmission Reducing Program (HRRP), which ensures that the percentage of patient exacerbations in the behavior therapy unit is lowered and also inspires medical professionals to clearly articulate with and identify the concerns of the citizens those who are interacting with. Healthy People 2030 pushes for improving clinical treatments by expanding the quantity of supervision and trying to reduce patient recurrence (Roy et al., 2022).
Furthermore, the Medicaid and Medicare regulations are worth considering because they have a great influence on the coordinating of treatment in US therapeutic institutions. Its purpose is to considerably minimize the price of treatment programs in our nation while ensuring that patients receive the highest quality treatment. For example, Medicaid currently serves 4.2 billion patients in the US to assist those that can’t afford medical care.
National, State, or Local Policy Provisions that Raise Ethical Dilemmas
Although the ANA does a fine job in crafting out the ethical responsibilities of the healthcare workers, especially nurses, unfortunately, some room for ethical dilemmas still exists within it. The first factor corresponding to ethical dilemmas is the decision-making ability of the patient. When inducted into the rehab centers, the patients are often endorsed with medical treatment and certain medications that may relax their minds and retire them temporarily from performing rational decision-making. Even though the medications and drug prescriptions are a part of the care coordination plan for patients in rehab centers, what nurses need to ensure is that to not inquire about the patient about critical decision making when the patient is not in a rational state of thinking. Respecting the patient autonomy should be followed in all cases but a vital aspect to note is to not inflict the patients with crucial decision making when the patient is under medications. This can hinder the patient’s autonomy right and thus provide a breach of an ethical dilemma.
Lastly, another paradigm of ethical dilemma which exists in the rehab centers and the ethical policies is the provision of insurance. Under the ANA ethical policies, all patients in the rehab centers should be provided with financial aid in the form of insurance. This is the domain where the ethical dilemma arises. Muslim patients have certain religious limitations regarding insurance allowance. This is can result in the provision of low-quality medical care to Muslim patients which can prove to be a hindrance to their effective care coordination plans.
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NURS FPX 4050 Assessment 2 Attempt 1 Ethical and Policy Factors in Care Coordination
Despite the fact that ethical standards are critical for the correct supply and development of healthcare practice, some nationally or state-level rules, as well as modifications in various local regulations, present ethical considerations that must be addressed. In order to improve treatment facilities and give the best possible treatment to patients suffering from drug addictive behavior, the CARA (Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act) was adopted at the national level. This policy permits the allocation of $1.8 billion each year to combat the drug epidemic and allocating wealth for chemical dependency prevention and therapy for people in demand of such programs (Roy et al., 2022).
ANA does a fine job in crafting out the ethical responsibilities of the healthcare workers, especially nurses, unfortunately, some room for ethical dilemmas still exists within it. Another national policy that raises the stakes for an ethical dilemma is when dealing with religious patients. While dealing with patients with strict religious beliefs, nurses should strictly abide by the ethical policies proposed by the ANA, especially justice and beneficence. For instance, Muslim patients and Orthodox Christian patients may not accept subjection to certain medical treatments. These reservations of such patients should be respected and recognized before imposing any care coordination plan on them
Furthermore, the Substance Use Disorder Preventive that Promoting Opioid Rehabilitation and Therapy (SUPPORT) for Individuals and Families Act was passed to emphasize the rising prevalence of opioid usage. This policy initiative argues for better addiction medication delivery and more accessibility to evidence-based rehabilitation institutions and methods (Kosar et al., 2020). While both of these strategies, like others, present a good strategy for patient recovery, they also raise several moral considerations. Reducing readmission is not achieved by rehabilitation services. An increasing emphasis on treatment procedures unnecessarily focuses putting people in rehabilitative institutions for the purpose of therapy, which might also impair a person’s ability to operate in community.
Policies such as CARA and SUPPORT advocate for providing ethical resources to care centers while placing a low priority on therapeutic intervention for persons who do not live within care facilities.
Impact of the Code of Ethics of Nurses on Care Coordination
The code of ethics of nurses imposes a significant impact on the care coordination plan as well. Since the code of ethics restricts the nurses to follow a patient-centered care regime that ensures the healthy and positive treatment of the patients, so it can be safely stated the code of ethics of nurses imposes a highly positive and beneficial impact on care coordination.
As discussed above, the ethical factors and policies provided by ANA govern the behaviors of nurses towards patients, these policies further give birth to a set of ethical conditions and concerns that nurses have to abide by under all circumstances. Some of these ethical principles are stated below:
- Individualized patient care
- Controlled and constant monitoring of tools
- Responsibly, credibility, and accountability
- Practically based care outcomes
- Full transparency and fast information deliverance
- Provision of best medical facilities
These are some of the ethical principles which originate from the code of ethics of nurses provided by the ANA. These code of ethics and the generated ethical principles impose a beneficial impact on the care coordination plan of the patient as an ethical environment for the treatment of the patient encourages the nurses to provide the best of their abilities for the effective recovery of the patient.
NURS FPX 4050 Assessment 2 Attempt 1 Ethical and Policy Factors in Care Coordination
References
American Nursing Association (2021). Ethics and Human Rights https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/
Ditwiler, R. E., Swisher, L. L., & Hardwick, D. D. (2021). Professional and Ethical Issues in United States Acute Care Physical Therapists Treating Patients With COVID-19: Stress, Walls, and Uncertainty. Physical therapy, 101(8), pzab122. https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/pzab122
Fowler, M. D. (2017). Why the history of nursing ethics matters. Nursing Ethics, 24(3), 292 304. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733016684581
Gaines, K. (2021, July 20). Nursing Code of Ethics. nurse.org. https://nurse.org/education/nursing-code-of-ethics/
Uchtenhagen, A. A. (2010). Ethical perspectives in caring for people living with addictions: The European experience. International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England), 22(3), 274–280. https://doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2010.482097
