Introduction
In today’s changing environment, Health care system is changed in its overall structure and provides efficient services to the patients. Physicians, social workers, advance nurse practitioners and nurses are responsible for maintaining the ethical culture in healthcare system. Nowadays, people are very conscious about health and want efficient services. Healthcare leaders are responsible for providing efficient services to the customers. In this paper, issue of making optimum utilization of resources in the situation of disaster is identified. Apart from this, various strategies in order to handle the issue is also discussed here by the researcher.
Ethics and Ethical Responsibilities
In regard to ethical responsibility, leaders should be responsible for three things such as autonomy, beneficence and social justice. With the help of this, organization provides the efficient facilities to the people. In case of autonomy, leaders should develop the capacity to choose the appropriate solution for the different issues. Beneficence is the approach in which leader should promote the public health through the policy recommendations and educational programs (Nayak and Geroge, 2012). Lastly social justice is the kind of ethic in which; organization is responsible for providing social justice in distributing the health care products.
It is the ethical responsibility of leaders to focus towards the ethical issues in the organization. Health care organization should provide high quality health care services and greatest benefits. Apart from this, leaders should also provide opportunity to people to have freedom of choice in selecting the health care department. Healthcare organizations should also provide affordable services, so that people can also fulfill their other needs and wants. Health care department should also provide all time services to the customers (Blyth and Landau, 2004, p. 113). Thus, it is the ethical responsibility of leaders to provide fair treatment to all the patients. In recent year, some social and cultural issues are also found in the health care system.
Professionals should analyze the healthcare department from different perspectives. In today’s environment, it is the challenge to handle the problem of diverse people. Therefore, it is the ethical responsibility of doctors to provide information to the patients about the disease.
Issue in Healthcare System
In the year 2011, disaster was occurred in Japan, which hampered the life of large number of population. It is identified that people face certain problems in healthcare system due to the ineffective performance of leaders. Healthcare professionals were not able to make effective allocation of scare resources among the people in case of disaster. Healthcare professionals provided resources to the people, who are able to get those resources (Stronks and Mutha, 2010, p. 345). People with limited financial resources were not able to get an access to these resources and faced problems in regard to healthcare benefits. Apart from this, inefficiency of the employees to provide efficient services to the people also creates problems in healthcare system.
Subsequent to the disaster, people were not even able to fulfill their basic needs and also faced different healthcare problems. Leaders were also not able to understand the basic problems of the people. In addition to this, leaders were not capable enough to identify the disease that has been caused due to the disaster. Due to which, large number of people were died. Another key reason of this was the lack of appropriate treatment by healthcare professionals. Disaster occurred in the year 2011 and large numbers of people were in the need of effective services of healthcare department (Expert Panel on Global Nursing & Health, 2010). These problems have created the shortage in availability of healthcare professionals.
In this concern, healthcare department was not even able to understand the overall scenario and not provided the efficient services to the people. It is the responsibility of the healthcare department to take away the affected people in other areas in order to protect their lives. At the same time, professionals do not keep transparency and provided incomplete information to the patients. Through this, they earn more money from the patients. It is identified that large amount of money is wasted by the healthcare department and they did not provided the services adequately. This was the kind of social issue, which was seen in Japan at the time of disaster (Sternheimer, 2013).
Strategies to Handle Healthcare Issues
In order to overcome such type of issue, Wisconsin Division of Public Health, Hospital Emergency Preparedness Program and the Wisconsin Hospital Association have developed a program in, which it has defined the “Ethics of Healthcare Disaster Preparedness”. With the help of this, healthcare organizations are able to overcome various issues related to public health. Providing benefits to the people is helpful in providing social justice to the people (Loana, 2007). In the healthcare industry, it is necessary for the professionals to provide timely services to the patients.
It is identified that with the help of this program, healthcare professionals was able to understand the ethically justifiable expectations of the people about the healthcare system during the disaster. Moreover, through the program, organization provides education to the professionals about how they should provide healthcare facilities to the people. It is the responsibility of people to have proper knowledge about their current profession. With the help of this, they will be able to handle the disaster problem in an effective manner. In this program, it has the plan to keep the personnel safe in the disaster (Blyth and Landau, 2004, p. 113). All these strategies will be helpful in overcoming the problem of disaster management in healthcare.
Apart from this, company has also involved different strategies in order to provide some cultural and social benefits to the people. Some social benefits involve, providing free medicines, establishing camp and effective transportation facilities. All these facilities will be helpful in saving the life of large number of people. Thus, it is identified that healthcare professionals also made equal distribution of limited resources, which in turn provide social justice to the people. In addition to this, in today’s environment, leaders should present and communicate with the patients consistently. With the help of this, leaders become able to focus on the recovery in their disaster planning.
Outcome of the Programs
With the help of this program, people will develop more trust and respect for the healthcare industry. Moreover, they will also able to understand the competencies in which they need to be proficient, so that they will be able to manage the treatment of patients in situations like disaster. It is the duty to provide adequate care to the needy at the time of crises and provide the social justice to the people. Cultural competence is also essential to achieve organizational mission and priorities in order to meet the needs of patients.
Through the effective healthcare program, healthcare department will become more responsible towards their patients and decreasing the wastage of money (Winkelman, 2008, p. 43). In addition to this, some rules and regulations in the program have improved the overall level of healthcare department. Other countries provided some contribution to the injured people during the disaster. Apart from this, professionals from other countries have come to protect the life of people in Japan. Government has provided different benefits to all the people, without making any discrimination in relation to caste, religion, color etc.
After sometime, Japan has protected the lives of large number of people due to the efforts of other countries healthcare department as well. These efforts of healthcare department have also generated awareness among other countries for making provisions for the future contingencies (Hoff, 2009, p. 29). Professionals have attended workshops in order to gain knowledge for protecting lives of people. Therefore, healthcare department should improve the level of services and maintain transparency among the patients. People in Japan have started living their lives in an effective manner and leaders also make changes in its program at regular interval.
Health Care Leader
As the health care leader, disaster problem can be handled by adopting the different effective strategies. Healthcare leader should include the diversity in the healthcare leadership. In addition to this, system will be designed in order to meet the needs of diverse patients’ populations. They should also include effective communication networks, so that they will handle and understand the problem of people. Through effective communication channel, patients can discuss every type of problem with doctors (Mooney, 2011, p.43). At the same time, doctors are also able to treat the patients effectively.
Health care experts should make clear connection among culture competence, quality improvement and elimination of ethical disparities. Health care leaders will also follow the legal and regulatory perspectives in order to handle different issues. They should be patient-centered and provide equitable care in order to provide high quality services to the customers. As the health care leader, they are responsible for conducting market research in order to identify the variety of problems among the patients (Tjale and Villiers, 2004, p. 22). Moreover, they will also analyze the weakness of healthcare department and accordingly adopt the strategies.
Healthcare leader will attend the project in order to gain knowledge about the different cultural factors that diagnosis, treatment and communication between the patient and doctor. They will also maintain community cultural values and beliefs, so that it will be beneficial in eliminating harmful practices. After the disaster, patient population has also changed, according to which healthcare leader will also change its response. Thus, it is necessary for the healthcare leader to develop the disaster management program in the healthcare department. So, that Japan will be able to handle these kind disasters in future and protect the lives of country people (Nayak and Geroge, 2012). Therefore, it is important for the healthcare industry to make development in their services and strategies.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is concluded that health care system is responsible for maintaining efficient health and social benefit of the people. Autonomy, beneficence and social justice are three things that need to be included in the ethics of the healthcare system. Improper services during the disasters are the major problems with healthcare professionals. These professionals are not able to understand the problem of patients during the disaster. Thus, Wisconsin Division of Public Health, Hospital Emergency Preparedness Program and the Wisconsin Hospital Association have developed the program in which it has defined the “Ethics of Healthcare Disaster Preparedness” for solving the issues.