Privilege Delineation and Healthcare Ethics Discussion

Question 1: Privilege Delineation

Clinical privilege determines the extent to which health care professional can practice. Privileges are assigned based on the qualifications of the health care professionals.

However, these qualifications are not simply determined by the declaration of the professional, the hospital has to ensure that they can certainly perform the roles and responsibilities to which they are assigned (Rogers & Stavosky, 2019).

The process of delineation of clinical privileges is a process of confirming that a clinical professional can perform the roles for which they claim to be qualified for so as to enhance the quality of care delivery and the safety of the patients.

The process of delineation of clinical privileges begins with credentialing. Credentialing is a formal review of the qualifications of a clinical professional. The certifications, licensing, experience and the credentialing parties assess other formal identifiers of qualification.

The clinical professional may also be assessed to determine whether they have certain specific skills that re important for the provision of safe care. After privilege delineation, the professionals are reappointed.

Reappointment is very important for enhancing patient safety. The medical field is always changing, hence, the clinical professionals must update their skills. The process of delineation of clinical privileges ensures that the clinical professionals have updated their skills to meet the required standards before they can be reappointed to practice (Rogers & Stavosky, 2019).

This practice ensures that all professionals are qualified through licensing or certification to practice in a given area. Therefore, the patients are only exposed to professionals with the right skills and expertise to provide care to them. The hospital is also able to minimise the risk of liability when it performs this procedure by ensuring that its professionals are well equipped to perform clinical procedures on their patients.

Question 2: Healthcare Ethics

Institutional ethics committees face a lot of ethical dilemmas in the health care setting. An example of an ethical issue that is commonly faced by these committees is issues relating to physician-assisted deaths. The following is a hypothetical ethical dilemma that may face ethics committees.

A 57-year-old patient with stage 4 cancer has chosen to have physician-assisted suicide to instead of waiting for natural death. The cancer has damaged most of the body’s organs; hence the patient’s prognosis has been determined to be inevitable death. However, the patient comes from a religious family that is against assisted suicide.

They believe that a miracle could happen and the patient may be healed. The hospital is located in a state where physician assisted death of mentally competent and terminally ill patients are allowed. The physician and the hospital in general are in a dilemma on whether to follow the patient’s wants or the family’s wishes.

In this scenario, the ethics committee may first assess the patient to make sure that he is mentally competent to make the decision on physician-assisted suicide. If the patient is competent to make the decision, then his wishes should be put above those of his family.

The hospital’s ethical responsibility is to respect the autonomy of the patient. However, they must follow the required legal procedures for performing assisted suicide. This decision would impact the policies and operations of the facility by showing its priorities towards the patients’ rights.

The hospital will be demonstrating that its top priority is respecting the ethical rights of the patients who have been put under its care. Adult patients with the mental capacity to make decisions for their own health have a right to make those decisions (Arnold, 2017). By choosing to perform assisted suicide, the hospital will be respecting this right.

References

Arnold, R. (2017). The Ethics of Physician-Assisted Death (Doctoral dissertation, University of Rochester).

Rogers, L. C., & Stavosky, J. W. (2019). Hospital and Surgical Privileges for Doctors of Podiatric Medicine: A Position Statement from the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association, 109(S1), 1-4.

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