Table of Contents
Last decades have seen the change of healthcare focus from a technological model of treatment to a more service-oriented approach. Thus, the present paper discusses my personal values and beliefs with regard to the current health care policy.
My Personal Values and Spiritual Beliefs
As a health care provider, I strongly emphasize honesty, integrity, equality, caring behavior, and sincerity in my medical practice. These values are essential as long as they determine the medical decision-making capacity. Being a committed Christian, I believe that active involvement in spiritual dimensions is an indispensable part of treatment and healing processes. To be more precise, spiritual practices help in making various controversial ethical choices about treatment options.
Personal Values and Opinions in Terms of Cost, Quality, and Social Issues
Professional ethics requires nurses and physicians to be honest with their patients about the course of treatment, its risks and associated expenses. Honesty, integrity and sincerity are critical qualities for the implementation of such cost-containment approach as shared decision-making. A well-informed patient is able to make better clinical choices, thereby improving the outcomes and avoiding excess spending. Additionally, medical staff has to powerfully promote fairness, equality and caring behavior while ensuring that each patient is treated equally. Evidently, such model of care helps to maintain a high level of patient care and increase the likelihood of positive outcomes (McCormick, 2014). Such personal opinions, if shared by most providers, ensure positive social attitudes toward health care policies (Changes in Health Care Financing & Organization (HCFO), 2009).
Personal Beliefs and Ethical Principles
Each ethical principle addresses a definite personal value that arises in provider-patient relationships. Thus, the principle of autonomy addresses the issue of caring behavior, as long as a client’s decision is deeply respected. Beneficence and nonmaleficence are supported by honesty, integrity, and sincerity as they demand a provider to continually act in the patient’s best interests. Finally, the principle of justice is largely associated with the value of equality.
Factors Affecting Current Perspective on Health Care Policy
The change of the medicine’s focus can be explained by the fact that a client is likely to come to providers not only with physical symptoms but spiritual issues as well (McCormick, 2014). Once I had a spiritual content in the relationships with one of my patients. I noticed that she had no shoes to wear before discharging from the hospital. For this reason, I decided to purchase her a new pair of slippers. Guided by religious beliefs, I helped the patient to address her spiritual problems, such as sufferings and loneliness in the crisis of illness. In fact, upbringing, personal and professional experiences also have a profound impact on shaping my perspective on the current policy. For example, my patient would have died from massive bleeding if I did not insist on investigation and request for an urgent abdominal ultrasound. Such professional experiences have influenced by personal values and upbringing as well as suggested that the personality of a nurse is a serious consideration in promoting high-quality care. Apart from that, political ideology influences public perception of health care policy. Today, most Americans find health care unreasonably expensive and are concerned with rising costs of care delivery. Reforming the whole system helps to address the issue of trust, and thus, strengthens general public support (HCFO, 2009).
Inconsistencies
Unfortunately, the principle of equality in healthcare depends upon person’s ability to pay for the services. As not all patients are provided with the same access to health care, nurses are put in a difficult position where personal value of justice and fairness opposes to the government’s policy. Furthermore, other inconsistencies may arise due to religious beliefs and doctrines. For example, health care policy highlights the importance of patient’s autonomy, so that any treatment choice should be supported, regardless of provider’s religious practices. All in all, personal values and beliefs affect advocacy of changing the focus of medicine. Therefore, an emphasis should be placed on policy-making as an efficient tool to make a difference in the future.