However the newspaper published an article ‘Scandal of Docs with AIDS’ implying that the Department of Health and Social Security were trying to hide the fact that these doctors were continuing practice. The ethical dilemma of who had the greater rights the doctors not to have their patient confidentiality breached or their patients right to know that they were infected with the virus will be discussed. The AIDS/HIV Discrimination Act, The Data Protection Act and The Cauldicott Principles will be discussed as they have a huge impact on patient confidentiality. Relevant court cases, journals and media articles will be studied and Griepp’s model of ethical decision making will be applied. Patient autonomy has changed patient attitudes towards doctors over the last 30 years.
When it comes to understanding health doctors and other medical professional’s use what is know as the biomedical model of health. The biomedical model treats illness as strictly something that is wrong with the workings of the body caused by things such as germs, disease and accidents and doesn’t take in to account a persons social or mental factors. The biomedical model also gives doctors a set of basic guidelines in which to work to. These guidelines include some practices that the general public would just take as obvious, for example; putting the care of the patient as top priority, to do no harm to the patient and to provide a cure for the patients ailment. These are all things we expect to get when we visit the doctor as this is why we go there.
Logical Fallacies In our everyday life we use fallacies, without realizing that we do. Our conversations and interactions with people are at times involving “logical fallacies” which are mistakes in reasoning. This term comes from the Latin word deceit, and there is some form deception behind most of these lapses in logic (Current Arguments). The use of fallacies can be effective; the usage comes naturally to most people when conversing with one another and in a debate or argument. I will give a few different examples’ of common fallacies used today.
What is representation? ‘Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. Such representations may be in speech or writing as well as still or moving pictures.’ To look at representation, there are three ways. The first is the ‘reflective approach’, which its ‘meaning meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world.’ In this approach, language works by simply reflecting or imitating the truth that is already there and fixed in the world, is sometimes called “mimetic”. The second approach is the ‘intentional approach’, this type of approach occurs on contrary to the case, which links to representation.
_If I were the assistant in question in this scenario, the ethical school of thought I would subscribe to would be the Virtue Ethics school of thought. The Virtue Ethics school of thought focuses on practical wisdom as well as moral character to solve these types of ethical issues. In this case, the patient does pose a certain risk to the healthcare providers since he does carry the AIDS virus, but practical wisdom tells me that, through the use of proper PPE and using caution and awareness, this risk is minimal and can be virtually eliminated altogether. On the other hand, if treatment were to be refused to this patient based on this slight and avoidable risk, the repercussions of that refusal would be much greater and more profound on my life and career than the risk of contracting AIDS through this procedure would be. Through this school of thought, the solution to the problem becomes obvious and I would continue to treat the patient while protecting myself with the use of gloves and other PPE as appropriate to the procedure.
Schemas allow individuals to make sense of surroundings so they can have an understanding and quite possibly predict what should be happening next. Schemas will always unconsciously fill in the gaps of memory based on stereotypical views and expectations. Memories are constantly constructed and reconstructed in terms of schemas, and therefore subject to
But what if you cannot believe the person telling the story? What if the story itself is not meant to be simply read, but translated? The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that should be taken for what it is: the diary of a madwoman, but should not necessarily be believed as it is told. Charlotte Perkins Gilman penned this, what could be called a quasi-autobiography in 1892, as a “message from experience” to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a physician who treated Gilman’s ‘nervous disorder’ and prescribed his ‘rest cure’ to her in 1887: she was desperately pleading with him and others to alter this treatment, with warning of its horrific and detrimental effects. The dramatic and situational irony found over and over throughout the text in both narrative content and style are what in effect finally show the reader this story is not to be taken at the narrator’s word: a husband and wife lease a mansion for the summer so she can ‘rest’ to cure her ‘nervous condition’; family and servants tend to her, her baby and her duties- while she quietly obsesses about wall paper.
Ultimately the theory suggests that we modify these meanings in our mind and then act based on the symbols of reality that we have created. The opportunity for misunderstanding comes from the clashing of these meanings. There are a number of different interpretations and themes incorporated into SI, which I will attempt to unpack below. The first theme of the SI theory is, ‘the importance of meaning for human behaviour.’ This theme implies that we modify our behaviour based on the meanings that others have for us. The first assumption of this theme is that people make choices.
Would legal prostitution decrease sexually transmitted diseases? With diseases out there like syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and herpes Liberator states that "prostitutes must be monitored to prevent the spread of these affliction" what better way is there to monitor it than by legalizing it. He then goes on to say "legalizing it would require prostitutes to undergo a regular medical examinations" (Liberator3). By doing this he believes that "STDs would be prevented from being spread as well as other communicable ailments like hepatitis and tuberculosis"(Liberator3) what about the safety of theses prostitutes? Many prostitutes are taking advantage of, they are beaten by these men and many have even lost their lives.
“Many physicians say they would be clouding their roles as healers if they helped patients to die” (Buchanan 36.) Physicians even take the Hippocratic Oath, which states that “a physician promises to help the sick and never to cause harm” (Buchanan 36.) As Daniel E. Lee, a reporter for the Hastings Center, says “Meaning and hope are possible in all of life’s situations, even in the midst of suffering” (17.) If the United States were to nationally legalize assisted suicide, it would be a disaster, not only because the way it would go against our morals, but the way it would negatively effect today’s society. “Janet, Sherry , Marjorie, and Susan were not terminal by accepted medical definition…[they] were not Kevorkian’s patients in any traditional sense.