Ethical Decision Making Analysis
When the patients calls back and asks whether he is going to make it, there is a need to recognize that indeed that his injuries are life threatening hence the need for the quick operation. However, back in the mind of the doctor, there is need to recognize how they answer may affect the victims’ conditions even if there is no hope of the patient making out with such injuries.
It is important to remember that even if the victim’s life can be prolonged for one extra minute then that minute is valuable. 2. In this case, there is need to establish the parties that are directly involved with the patient like his immediate family members and establish whether they can be reached. This shall be important to establish to the victim his wishes to the family. 3. In this fact gathering steps, the important facts would be how the answer shall affect the victim.
From experience the doctor knows how telling the truth that the patient shall definitely not survive due to the extent of the injury shall have to the victim. It is this facts that should lead the decision making process. If giving false hopes has worked for others and prolonged their stay, then it is only good to give the victim some hope. 4. At this stage, there is need to evaluate the possibility of the alternative answer that is planned to be given to the victim.
At this level, it is important to analyze whether telling the victim that he shall not make it and then he dies immediately would leave you with a guilty conscience which would mean that the decision would be regretted. It is also at this stage where there is need for the test of whether the moral code of the family members as well as professional code of conduct shall be violated if the truth or otherwise of the patient is disclosed 5.
There are several values which will be pitted against one another: telling the truth and the need to protect the image of the hospital; serving personal needs by stating the truth and meeting the needs of the community be giving a sense of hope; and the need to act according to justice by telling the brutal truth versus the need to act according to mercy by giving a sense of hope even against all odds, to the casualty and his relatives. 6.
Withholding the patient’s propensity to death is likely to be the right move, based on the concept of utilitarianism. As Utilitarians maintain that a deed is noble if it fulfills the duty of benefiting the greatest number with the greatest good. In this case, both the family and the patient will have been accorded hope with the withholding of the negative prognosis. At the same time, doctors will have been accorded the chance to perform their duty and to succor the image of the healthcare services providing institution.
Kantianism would also not condemn the concealing of the sad prognosis on the prospects of death, given that the morality of that action is venerated by the fact that medical practitioners are to do their best, provided the patient has not yet succumbed. 7. The third way in this case, as a feasible alternative is to let the patient’s kinsmen to know the dangers of the medical intervention to be carried out on the patient; and making the same to be the undersigned. The medical services practitioners or the hospital administration and the patient’s kinsmen are the left and right wing.
All the while, the patient should be left out of this, undergoing treatment. This would parry away the possibility of the hospital being subjected to legal redresses in the wake of a botched medical intervention. 8. The best decision would be to subject the patient to treatment and giving him hope on one hand. On the other hand, I will opt to have the patient’s relatives be called and addressed about the readiness and willingness of the hospital medical staff’s commitment to succor the patient’s life. In a gentle and mellow manner, the danger of the patient’s state is to be deliberated to the relatives.
