1. Research five health-related organizations that have published or established a code of ethics. For your five organizations,
at least one of them should be a professional association and another one should be a regulatory agency. Provide your sources in a works-cited list that follows APA guidelines. 2. Write a short paragraph for each source that does the following:
a. Describe each organization's role in the health sciences field.
b. List one ethical standard from each source and explain why you think upholding that standard is important.
c. Describe a scenario in the health sciences profession where each ethical standard chosen from part b (above) would become an issue.
d. Find an ethical standard from each source and describe how it helps enforce or relate to an existing law or regulation. When researching your sources, respected health organizations, associations, and federal regulatory agencies are preferred; however, you can use whatever source you like as long as it contains relevant and important ethical standards relating to the health sciences field.
Your Assignment, Part II
Now that you've researched several ethics charters, it's time to put some of the principles you've read about into practice. Read each of the below scenarios, then make a decision about how you would solve the ethical dilemma. For each explanation, cite a relevant standard from an ethics charter to back up your decision.
1. Kendra is helping her manager dispose of some contaminated medical waste. When they take their bag of trash to the proper disposal area, Kendra notices that the door is locked for some reason. Her manager is on a busy schedule, and throws the waste in the regular trash instead, saying, "There isn't enough time for this. The garbage workers can deal with it now."
2. Martin is caring for a patient with hepatitis B, something the patient does not want people to know about until he is ready to discuss it with family and friends. At some point, the patient's mother arrives at the hospital and asks Martin what is wrong with her son. The mother looks very worried, and states how much she cares about her son's well-being.
Your Assignment, Part III
Now that you've cited your sources and analyzed their relevance to ethics and law, it's time to describe a code of ethics consistent with the health care field. Use your research as a platform to put together this code of ethics. The code of ethics you create should have at least 10 guiding principles that all health care workers should abide by.
(Remember that while you should not plagiarize other ethical codes, it is fine to have the 10 guiding principles you choose overlap with some of the preexisting sources.)
