Healthcare institutions, pertaining to both public and private sectors in the country need to set common norms and standards of ethical conduct instead of focusing on only the most visible ethical concerns.
The norms and standards of ethical conduct, in each institution, must necessarily be communicated and enforced in every function of healthcare organisations and institutions so as to help employees handle ethical issues effectively.
Traditional ethics committees constituted in health care organisations for the past few years were registered to be reactive while addressing only the visible clinical ethics, and that too was done half heartedly.
Dr Murad Khan, a senior psychiatrist and a strong proponent of ethics, found these ethical committees to be unable to highlight deeper organisational factors that influenced how a healthcare organisation functioned, instead of focusing on issues related primarily to clinical ethics.
Additionally, ethics committees were not well connected with other functions of the organisation which resulted in employees being unable to handle these issues.
“These issues often fall beyond the scope of conventional ethics committees because they may not pertain to clinical service, research or academics, but to the way the organization functions,” said Dr Robyna Khan.
Dr Murad Khan supplemented her and mentioned that as part of an organisational approach to ethics, committees should address matters such as conflict of interest issues, resource allocation, appointments and promotions.
He reiterated that these committees must also support other ethical activities in their institutions.
Dr Melissa M. Bottrell of the National Center for Ethics in Health Care, United States, who had been in the country to attend an AKU symposium, recommended “Integrated Ethics” model as a paradigm shift that would remedy most of these defects.
She said that, “By envisioning new ways of looking at ethical concern in health care, ‘Integrated Ethics’ empowers organisations to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.”
To make ethics a basic principle there was also need to identify the role of leaders, faculty, administration and staff in formulating and implementing viable solutions.
