HEALING AND AUTONOMY CASE STUDY

Spirituality and ethics in clinical practice has become a topic of concern due to the conflicting interests of many patients with the required professional practice. Patients may present with a disease that needs treatment or seeking prompt clinical interventions but their family members or themselves may want to leave the disease to God to manifest His power of healing. In such situations, health care providers are faced with a challenge of making the patients or family members understand why clinical interventions in addition to religious interventions are important. For instance, in the Case study: Healing and Autonomy, Mike and Joanne who are the parents to James and Samuel are not able to make the best decisions when their son, James, is diagnosed with acute glomerulonephritis as they have strong belief in God and His healing power.

Based on Christian narrative and Christian vision, Mike and Joanne cannot agree to have Samuel donate his kidney to help his brother as suggested by the physician, whose health is quickly deteriorating as they would want God perform a miracle over James’ life. These people choose prayers to medical treatment. This religious autonomy has been seen in James parent’s case where they decided to forego dialysis and chose prayers instead. This decision was unethical because it led to James worsening in condition, and later the parents brought the child for dialysis, which was now a permanent procedure and hence a kidney transplant was required. Tele-ontological theories that were developed earlier describe that rightness and wrongness in making decisions in life depends entirely on the outcomes of the decisions (Williams, Williams, & Morgan, 2013).

The decisions that the parents made concerning their child’s health could have been observed at the outcome view point. According to their faith, donating a kidney is not part of the faith and they find it hard for their other son to donate a kidney to the other sick son. Mike’s decision against the medical profession Mike, James father, decided to make a decision to take his son to church for prayers instead of upholding the reality of the matter and perform dialysis. The law has always allowed people to have their right to make decisions on their own for their own good, especially making decisions for their children. Mike did not consider the reality of James’ medical attention and his decision led to more suffering and emotional pain to both the sick child and the family.

The medical professions are entitle to provide optimum medical and healthcare to such patients, but this could not happen without the parents making the right decision for dialysis and transplant. However, the law allows patients and parents or spouses to make decisions for their loved ones and the medical fraternity cannot violate their autonomy in decision making. According to Christianity, organ transplant is not an ethical procedure to perform and this made Mike in a big dilemma, but he has to make a choice for the betterment of his son. Christian perception and Thoughts on Health and Sickness Christians, just like any other, can suffer and experience sickness. However, Christians believe sickness originates from sin and is a sign of God’s punishment on sinners.