Let It Pour – Case StudyEssay Preview: Let It Pour – Case StudyReport this essayAbstractIn contrast of problems and dilemmas that plague health care, and those facilities that provide treatment, the solutions to these problems are omnipresent at the core of administration. That is, these administrations are tasked, or charged, with the evolutionary changes that stem from fiduciary, medical, and technical components of the industry that are designed to not only provide the highest quality in health care, but affordable, and competent health care professionals that strive to improve these services to a continuum of customer satisfaction using the foundation of a collaboration of vision, values, and integrity.
Let it Pour – My First Assignment as Executive AssistantAs I walked to the door of the conference room, I thought to myself, “Wow, I am off to a tough start.” My brain was in information overload, but I had to produce, I could not fail at my first assignment as an Executive Assistant. I made my way back to my office, the “desk”, and sat down to jot down the problems as I understood them.
The first problem was that staff members were not providing, or rather neglecting medical services to patients on the grounds that they violate patients religious beliefs. My first thoughts on the matter were, how could anyone compromise their personal beliefs for their chosen profession, especially when it involves someone whose life may depend on those services? The reasoning is that if it is part of your job, not simply because we work in a hospital, but because we work in a hospital and the underlying mission is to help and care for those who cannot care for themselves, for whatever reason.
The second thing I noted was that there are a select few patients who are refusing certain medical services. These decisions may be a result of culture, or religion, or merely due to generation gaps between the patient and physician. In any event, this is an area if concern, and must be addressed accordingly.
Another issue of concern, and a major issue, is the Do Not Resuscitate order. Patients rights should come before anything else, but an equal understanding is that hospital staff members must possess the wanton desire to do all they can to save lives. Because of some recent national issues regarding this, and because these issues are both of moral and an indisputable right to life, policies must be addressed with emphasis placed on matters such as a “Living Will”.
The hospital also has pharmacists who are helping people by acts of generosity, more or less out of the goodness of their hearts, much to the dismay of the hospitals expense, by providing prescriptions to uninsured patients and accepting an unapproved payment plan.
Another issue of concern is that the hospital counseling staff has been found to be offering its services pro-bono as well. If the hospitals position is to demand a 15% decrease in our fixed costs, this is certainly not the way.
Lastly, there is a young resident doctor who is requesting expensive, fruitless tests for patients that have no hope of survival. His thought has to be that maybe, just maybe he will run across something that a more senior, more skilled doctor may have missed.
I am starting to re-think my “Let It Pour” attitude from this morning. This assignment grows more and more daunting by the minute. I am just thankful that I am not the hospital CEO.
Solutions to the ProblemsThe first problem identified was the issue of the hospital staff not providing proper medical care to out-patients on the basis that some of the procedures may possibly infringe, or border on an infringement their religious beliefs. The hospital staffs, specifically doctors and nurses in a hospital have a core obligation to provide medical care to patients, regardless of their religious beliefs. When those obligations are compromised, liability issues arise on the part of the hospital.
All health professionals have a duty of care to all their patients. It is neither ethical nor professional to exclude any person or group from treatment because they do not conform to our religious or personal views (Tonbridge 2002). In cases of this complexity, staff members actions reflective of insubordinate acts should be deemed totally inappropriate.
Another issue identified as problematic at the hospital are patients refusing medical care. As new immigrants flock to the United States each year, it becomes more challenging and important for health care professionals to be sensitive to cultural and religious traditions different from their own while still providing optimal care for these patients, but cognizant of that enculturation. Confounding the influx of unfamiliar cultures is the relative lack of knowledge among medical professionals about other cultural groups. This can, at best, lead to misunderstanding and, at worst, compromise the care and treatment of a patient (Brown 2002). Part of being a care-giver is to possess the innate ability to be compassionate by actions such as listening to your patients, trying to understand them, and becoming educated on and in their culture. By listening you can resolve possible problems that can crop up during treatment. On the same token, patients need to trust their care givers. That trust can be gained by learning as much as possible about the patients culture, and by possibly learning their language. In some instances an interpreter is sufficient, but sometimes the meaning or feeling is lost in translation. In the future, more and more health care professionals will need to be multilingual.
As far as the Do Not Resuscitate orders go, this certainly is an issue that will continue to be hotly contested for reasons notwithstanding the obvious. As these issues intensify merely from recent government legislation, it has become apparent that visceral solutions may not be reached in this century. The argument on this will continue to be that this is a hospital and hospitals are designed with the sole intent to preserve life, not to decide moral issues. “There are still a fair number of doctors around who are uncomfortable with patients having Do Not Resuscitate orders,” said Dr. David Clive, chairman of the ethics committee at University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. “It may be for personal or religious reasons or it may be their medical opinion that the patient is not sufficiently ill to warrant the Do Not Resuscitate order. But its important to realize that if the patient is competent, they rule the day, not the physician”
”. To this they say, “I cannot make a decision about whether to refuse an urgent service from this person or at any other time. I don’t know what’s in his heart.”†
The patient may have been told, as Dr. Clive did in an article published in the December 2010 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, that at this point their physician had received some kind of medical emergency or that they should consider a change in practice if a physician came to her and told her that she might be unable to continue with her work until a doctor came.”‡In other words, this is not some kind of medical emergency, it’s just the patient’s wishes that she or a loved one, especially a loved one who is seriously ill, is given a stern and invasive medical order to follow.•
‣ “In a more common sense, an emergency situation involving a loved one would not be an acceptable setting” for the Do Not Resuscitate orders, “a situation where the patient’s physical health would have been significantly compromised if that person should ever have been made the new physician.”․
However, it’s not all over with physicians ‥ “Although the patient is usually informed of these orders and is told that they have yet to be signed or approved, the Do Not Resuscitate order is not always effective. After signing an order, physicians may wish to do the patient’s own due diligence before granting an emergency order, in which case the person should be given another chance to sign or give a written warning that he or she has no intention of continuing to do so.”…
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If the patient does not follow the doctor’s instructions, or has received an unexpected emergency or has been placed in medical isolation for a significant length of time, the order simply cannot be effective. But as noted and discussed earlier, the “Do Not Resuscitate.”

It does not simply stop an ambulance from rushing down the sidewalk towards the hospital, or the helicopter will get out of the way on to a city road where the patient is waiting for. By not doing their own due diligence, the Do Not Resuscitate can still lead to another hospital’s emergency evacuation, or another hospital’s patient’s death or medical failure.

It is also a medical procedure to have people who have serious life-threatening illnesses wait until it is obvious that the patient is seriously ill. Many the very families and sickest relatives of the deceased are denied such care. This has left physicians with more difficult choices: they can refuse the patient until the cause of illness is known, when it does not warrant such an urgent treatment, or they can try to block action or even protest.‪
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Even in cases where the patient was given a clear and immediate warning, such treatment should not get started if the person has been deemed ill by his health care workers, even though medical examiners believe doctors should not have a direct link of the patient to a medical condition, and the patient has informed a doctor at the meeting he has a life-threatening illness. But if such an illness is a symptom of health care incompetence in health care utilization, an emergency must be placed upon the order. However, if the patient has a specific health condition, such as a pre-existing condition, such as cancer, or a life-threatening condition such as heart disease, then the emergency action is required. ‬
There are other complications inherent in emergency and medical decisions, and this one can only raise eyebrows.₽
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When the health care workers are in the vicinity of