Patient Advocacy and the Bioethical Decision-Making Model

Patient Advocacy
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Patient Advocacy Introduction Patient advocacy is an integral part of healthcare administration. It is an act that promotes responsibility through advocating for the rights, health, and safety of the patients. This essay analyzes a clinical advocacy situation through the bioethical decision model and discusses nurses' role in patient advocacy. Case study John is a 25-year-old patient suffering from ischemia-reperfusion inflammatory reaction. This condition includes injuries to the soft tissues involving crushing force, myocardial ischemia, or stroke. Hyperbaric oxygen treatment is needed to reduce the tissue damage. The treatment is effective, and when used early enough, it mitigates the ischemia-reperfusion response altogether. John's condition is severe; therefore, one visit is not enough. His non-healing wounds mean that he requires 40 or more visits. This treatment is expensive, and John has told the resident nurse to reduce the treatment frequency as he cannot afford the co-payments. In such a situation, the resident nurse should step in and advocate for the patient. A nurse can have numerous resources within the immediate community or the pharmaceutical companies. The resources can include programs in local stores that provide significant cost reduction and prescription and treatment pricing. Consequently, nurses can advocate by persuading specific pharmaceuticals to match the pricing or offer patients a deal that ensures they can afford to get the medication they need (Maryland & Gonzalez, 2012). In this particular case, the resident nurse can advocate for John to receive consequent treatment in a facility at a price he can afford. Bioethical Decision-Making Model Bioethics is a complicated discipline that triggers questions about personal freedoms, obligations to others, ethical values, and the consequences of actions. The difficulty in bioethical dilemmas is that one question can tend to give rise to other ethical questions. Therefore, the decision-making model is a guideline that helps individuals to navigate ethical dilemmas. The model is a six-step process that concludes in the implementation and evaluation of a solution. They include; identifying the problem, conducting research, identifying stakeholders, identifying values, coming up with solutions, and evaluating the decision. Identifying the ethical problem is the first step for analyzing an ethical case. In bioethical cases, various questions are asked, taking on the legal, social, and medical perspectives. When asking the questions, specific terms such as "responsibility," "duty," "ought," and "should" are used to offer perspective to decisions made in the case. For the case study, the resident nurse's responsibility is that John does not cut any corners with the treatment. However, the nurse's capabilities do not extend onto the financial matters of the treatment. Nurses are ethically mandated to have the best interests of the patient at heart. Therefore, the nurse identifies the cost of subsequent hyperbaric oxygen treatment as the reason that jeopardizes John's wellbeing. The decision-making process progresses into the second step that involves the assessment of facts available....