Stanford Health Care

As a health care organization, Stanford Health Care medical center is dedicated to honest and ethical practices when serving its clients. Health care practitioners in the organization are expected to conduct themselves with integrity. Specifically, individuals are expected to behave honestly, ethically, and with highest levels of veracity. Every practitioner at the organization ensures they adhere to the code of ethics when making decisions as each individual is held responsible for their own actions especially when handling clients. The organization’s ethical code of conduct is very important to its corporate integrity philosophy. Stanford Health Care communicates its ethical standards to its clients. This is done to ensure clients understand what the organization stands for. The code of conduct also dictates the organization’s culture for volunteers, vendors, the management, staff, and any other person that interacts with it (Stanford Health Care). Moreover, the organization also uses its code of conduct to ensure its medical practices are handled in an ethical and legal manner. For example, it strives to deal with its patients in a respectful and compassionate manner. This has helped in the establishment of a teamwork culture and in ensuring excellence. Fundamentally, individuals collaborate to provide the best services to patients (Stanford Health Care, 2017).

The organization has a good code of ethics. Employees at the organization pay attention to it as it stipulates personal responsibility and accountability. This means that every individual is held accountable for their own actions. Those who fail to adhere to the code of conduct are likely to find themselves in problems with the management. Individual practitioners adhere to the code of ethics in their dealings with patients as well as other vendors. Individuals also take advantage of the code of ethics when faced with ethical dilemmas (Ozoliņs & Grainger, 2015). Ethical dilemmas are common in the organization especially when the law does not seem to provide the way forward in different situations employees face. With this being the case, an individual is forced to rely on the code of conduct to make an informed decision that will benefit both the client and the organization. Basically, in the absence of the code of conduct, it could be hard for employees to make some decision which could result in poor service delivery (Edge & Groves, 2018). However, some employees can resist the code of conduct especially if it conflicts with their personal interests and values. In this regard, it is imperative for the management at the organization to come up with strategies on how it can ensure all employees believe in and adhere to the code of conduct (Ozoliņs & Grainger, 2015).

There are number of strategies that the management at the organization can employ to ensure active compliance among employees. For one, there is the need for the management to ensure that every individual at the organization understand the importance or the benefits of the code of conduct (Ozoliņs & Grainger, 2015). One of the main reasons as to why some people resist the code of ethics in an organization is a lack of understanding on the importance of such an initiative. With this being the case, some individual resist ethical standards even when in actual sense they are to benefit from the same. As such, explaining the importance of ethics can help in ensuring individual believe in the same and show willingness to adopt the standards. In the same way, it is also essential for the organization to train its people on how they can apply the code of ethics in their daily dealings with patients (Edge & Groves, 2018). Additionally, the management at the organization can also outline the potential punishments individuals are likely to suffer should they fail to adhere to the laid down ethical standards. This will also act as a motivating strategy to ensure every individual understands the consequences of behaving otherwise. Equally, the organization should ensure that those who come forward to report unethical behaviors are protected. This will ensure that individuals do not engage in unethical behavior deliberately (Morrison, 2016).

There are times when an employee can fail to follow the organization’s code of ethics but who do not break any company policies or laws. In such a case, it may be ill-advised to terminate the employee’s employment (Morrison, 2016). First, the management should establish why the individual in question behaved the way they did. If the action was deliberate, a warning may suffice. Basically, the employee should be made to understand that a repeat of the same behavior will not be tolerated in the future. Firing an employee immediately can lead to a lawsuit as the employee did not break any law or company policy (Edge & Groves, 2018). However, if a contract with the employee outlines such a punishment, depending on severity of the employee’s actions, the management can go ahead and terminate employment relationship. On the other hand, if an employee does not follow the code of ethics unintentionally, the management should take the necessary actions to inform the person where they went wrong, how they can avoid the same in the future, and the importance of doing so (Ozoliņs & Grainger, 2015).

References

Edge, R. S., & Groves, J. R. (2018). Ethics of Health Care: A Guide for Clinical Practice. Boston : Cengage Learning.

Morrison, E. E. (2016). Ethics in Health Administration: A Practical Approach for Decision Makers. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Ozoliņs, J. T., & Grainger, J. (2015). Foundations of Healthcare Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stanford Health Care. (2017). About Us: Code of Conduct. Retrieved from Stanford Health Care: https://stanfordhealthcare.org/about-us/conduct.html

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