Legal Essay

For this reason, it may cause adverse effects on the wellbeing of the patient which include death. It is thus the role of the healthcare practitioners to consider a code of ethics which include professionalism, integrity among other important aspects of healthcare delivery (Haith, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to describe the legal, ethical as well as professional issues that impact on the way a person-centered care was delivered to a patient in the hospital in the video provided. The patient under consideration is Dawn who has suffered a massive stroke three weeks ago. The husband Kevin and daughter Bronwyn had visited the doctor to discuss her health condition. And this was the case when he was called by the nurse to discuss the next step regarding the life of the patient.

Both Kevin and Bronwyn had the idea of resuscitation as their option for helping Dawn out of her condition. The nurse, therefore, wanted to engage them on the cost benefit of their decisions and proposed other options that can be applied which can play a significant role in improving the recovery process of the patient even though she is part of the decision makers. This means that the treatment was to be administered to her without necessarily engaging her in the process of decision making (Choa, 2007). By so doing, it would be termed as negligence, the patient may be forced to go and seek legal redress on what happened to him in the hospital, and this could lead to huge fines.

In an attempt of respecting Dawn’s autonomy, the healthcare practitioner informed them of all the benefits and risk of treating the patient without her consent. However, due to the personal issues that interred with their reasoning Kevin and Bronwyn were not in a position to make a decision due to the contradiction of lack of self-belief. It was, therefore, this condition that informed the nurse that the condition that Dawn was suffering from is what had made her not to be independent in decision-making. However, it is worth noting that before treating Dawn, there are some guidelines that should be taken into consideration as provided by MHA and the doctor should follow this to the later. These guidelines are commonly referred to as codes of practice and it’s associated with all personnel who are working with the adult patients who are believed to lack the capacity to make their decisions regarding their health conditions.

For instance, administering depot injection would help alleviate the symptoms of the illness even though administering injecting could be causing more pain to the patient. In this instance, there is no way the doctor could administer an injection to the patient without causing unpleasant condition and pain. The ethical dilemma arises at this point is on the side of the doctor where she is supposed to weigh between the benefits of administering the care without the consent of the patient and also the risks of administering medication without the consent of the patient (Beauchamp and Childress, 1994). However, if the doctor had not applied non-maleficence in the administration of medication to Dawn, the possibility of Dawn getting harmed would have been high which could have aggravated her health conditions.

Due to this, the health condition of the patient would worsen as a result of stress which is caused by the harm when administering care. Without justice, the nurse who examined her would not have given the opportunity to Kevin and Bronwyn to contribute their views on the kind of care that Dawn was to receive. The nurse, therefore, showed professionalism by considering this important ethical principle for administering justice to all patients regardless of her conditions which would ensure attainment of the desired health outcome of all the patients who attend the hospital in search of medical attention. For instance if this principle, had not been put into play by the nurse in the administration of care to Dawn, the nurse would not have assessed involved members of the family in the process of decisions making.