Ethical Decision Making

Sunday April 3, 2011

Culture and Hospice Care

Is the western way always the right way? America is a great melting pot of many cultures and with this we see many cultures and practices in health care. The western nurse is not always ready to take on the change in thinking as well as the change of openness or lack thereof.

In December 1991 The Patient Self Determination Act (PSDA) went into effect that gave the patient the right to determine what was and what was not done to them in the event that as part of The Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1990 (Rouse, 1991 as cited in Carter & Tsai, 2008 ). The PSDA gives a competent patient the right to make their wishes known. The patient also has the right to know what is going on in their health and health care.

As a western country there is the principal that person has the right to make their own decision and to exercise individual choices when it comes to their own health care (Johnstone, 2004, Beauchamp & Childress, 1994 as cited in Carter & Tsai, 2008). As a western society we have the belief that a person has the right to know what is wrong with their health and what course of treatment they want to partake in. There are some cultures that do not hold this belief. As many nurses have seen in their practice that some patients are not aware of their terminal diagnosis and that is the families wish.

I would like some feedback on your views of this ethical situation in that hospice setting.

Reference

Charter, K., & Tsai, C. (2008). Palliative care in a multicultural society: a challenge for western ethics. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing. 26(2). http://web.ebscohost.com.lib.kaplan.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&hid=18&sid=ebe3444b-b01f-4dcb-b8ac-2e2254eabe82%40sessionmgr4.

Johnstone, M., (2004) Bioethics: a nursing perspective. (4^th ed.). Churchill Livingstone: Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Rouse, F. (1991). Patients, providers, and the PSDA. Hastings Center Report, 21 (5). Retrieved July 8, 2009, from Academic Search Complete database.

Ulrich, L., (2001). The patient self-determination act: Meeting the challenges in patient care. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.