HSC 350 Principles of Health Care

HSC 350 Course Reflection

1) Begin reflecting by reviewing the course objectives. Pick any four to describe how the objectives were met in your newly developed understanding and awareness of legal and ethical issues for health professionals.

a. Developing ethical reasoning and/or ethical decision making.

I truly feel that this course was a great follow-up course after taking Ethics. It was a great refresher and it focused more on the health care side. Ethical reasoning is important because it makes an individual aware of other people’s opinions and why they have them. Learning about ethics also instills the knowledge of how to interact with different people and understand their views.

b. Learning to apply course material (to improve thinking, problem solving, and decisions).

Knowing the reasoning of ethical reasons helps and individual understand the why behind their decisions and helps them make more informed decisions concerning patient care. In health care, ethical decisions are made all of time for patients to help them recover from their ailments and lead productive lives.

c. Describe the value of a profession’s internally enforced codes of practice.

A profession’s internally enforced code of practice is crucial to their existence. Without this, they may get a bad reputation for not caring about the individuals they work with. A code of practice is important because it gives guidelines on how to focus standards, principles, and rules. These three things will give guidance to employees for general situations but may often require some interpretation.

d. Compare accreditation and regulatory compliance.

Accreditation is when a third-party reviews standards and practices of an organization and confirms its competence in demonstrating that they are conforming to the requirements that have been set. Regulatory compliance is when an organization is aware of and takes steps to comply with laws, policies, and regulations.

2) Describe at least three main takeaways from this course (nuggets of information or as I like to call them, the “A-ha moments”) you were not aware of before this class.

When I enrolled in this course, I was unaware that it dealt with health care ethics since the name was Principles of Health Care. When I realized that it was about health care ethics, I was pleasantly surprised and happy that I could dive deeper into the world of ethics since I had just finished an Ethics course. I was also happy because I work in health care as a Paramedic so I knew that this course would help me grow as a person and a professional. During the course, my main takeaways that I never knew about were: government ethics and how it affected such a wide array of areas, how we were able to learn more about employee rights and how they are affected by ethics, and the information that we gathered as a group to complete our Team Project assignment.

3) Provide three ideas, facts, and/or content (IFCs) that can be directly exercised or correlated into use for college, career, personal life, and future activities.

· The first area that I thoroughly enjoyed was about end of life dilemmas. I have had DNR and DNI orders, and a living will since I was 19. I have been for this ethical dilemma and have not been afraid to speak out on it. I would like to study this more in college and continue researching it after I graduate. There are a lot of misconceptions associated with euthanasia and I would like to be able to have a profound voice and be able to inform the public about it.

· The next area that I want to incorporate into my personal life and career is about patient consent. This area is interesting to me because as a paramedic, we have a very short amount of time to determine the mental status of a patient so that we know what kind of consent we will have to follow. Quite often this is an ethical dilemma because as medical professionals, we know what must be done but the patient will refuse treatment. This is another area that I will continue researching as I continue my professional journey because this can be such a grey area with a wide scope of interpretation.

· Lastly, I really liked learning more about patient rights. I feel this intertwines with patient consent and is important to understand and be able to incorporate. As we enter the health care profession, we are told that what we are doing is always about the patient. We can not force a patient to do what we want; be we can help by educating them so that they can decide what is best for them. I am excited to know that I will be taking a patients’ rights class to expand my knowledge of the subject and be able to use this knowledge on a day to day basis.