Critical Thinking Case Study:Let It Pour – My First Assignment as Executive Assistant The mission of Faith Community Hospital is to maintain it’s spiritual heritage and values, while providing health services to the community and retaining members that sh
... deals with the differing views of how to implement the mission statement within the medical environment, and the conflict of views among different groups. Patients feel that they should have the right to refuse medical treatments based on their beliefs, including the implementation of do-not-rescuscitate orders, or the refusal of surgeries due to their religious beliefs. At the same time, doctors and nurses are faced with having to uphold their Hippocratic Oaths, while balancing their own beliefs and their interpretation of the mission of the hospital. They may not perform a treatment due to their beliefs which a patient may want or need, and another doctor needs to be found that is willing to perform the treatment. Thrown into this mix are outside organizations such as the Department of Child and Family Services who can potentially take children away from a family if medical treatment is denied either by the medical staff or the family. The views regarding payments to the hospital from patients, and how to handle patients who may not be able to pay, also differs widely throughout the Faith Community Hospital . Some may turn patients away because they are unable to pay, knowing that the hospital must have an income in order to serve the good of the community. Others may take patients without the ability to pay or even set up payment or other arrangements for such patients, being that their faith denotes them helping others above and beyond the financial needs of the hospital. A solution that would encompass resolution for all of these problems the hospital is facing would be hard to organize. A solution that I would propose for these situations would first and foremost entail the designing of policies and procedures that must be followed by those involved in the hospital’s operations. These policies should be in keeping with the faiths and beliefs proposed in the hospital’s mission statement, and should also prescribe the amount of leeway that individuals are allowed to take regarding these policies. It would be near impossible to prescribe a set of policies that would apply to everyone and would satisfy the staffing and family requirements of keeping with their personal beliefs, as all beliefs will inevitably vary widely. Drawing up such a prescription of policies would need to include strict definitions for those policies which the hospital must keep under any circumstances. An example of this would be in a situation where the outside law is involved. The hospital must abide by the law to stay in operations, and defining those laws within the polices would keep those in check who may not readily see or agree with where the line may be drawn on certain issues. A family may have the right by law to choose a do-not-rescuscitate order for their child by law, but in the location of the hospital it may be governed by Child and Family Services that treatment could not be denied for some conditions such as appendicitis. The solution proposed for Faith Community Hospital would also need to draw out how much leeway each group of individuals can take in regards to their personal beliefs. Any leeway granted to employees or other groups should be documented at the start of employment or involvement with the hospital. For example, this would allow the hospital to better keep tabs on whose beliefs would conflict with the needs of certain patients, or the medical treatment and staffing necessities of various departments. The issue of the need for either cost reduction or increased patient visits could be...