Ethical Systems Essay

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Introduction

The Baptist Health South Florida (BHSF) is the holding venture of hospitals across Florida that provides international health services besides its in-patient and outpatient services. BHSF’s mission is to improve peoples well being and health status. The organization engages communities, and assists in promoting preservation of life, thus maintaining sanctity in the society. The mission statement of BHSF ties its vendors, employees, physicians and management to the highest integrity combined with moral practice.

At this point we would be exploring different ethical systems, namely; ends driven, relativistic, entitlement, and duty driven. The end driven ethical system concentrates on the resulting output from an action. Ends driven ethical system is more prescriptive While ends driven approach is an imposition based on the relativistic ethical system. The ends driven approach is much relaxed in the sense that it accounts for the context of moral relativity of actions and consequences. Relativistic ethical system investigates into the inherent objective of one in defining the right and the wrong. The normative ends driven ethical system turns into a descriptive and tolerant in relativistic system Contrary to both these systems the entitlement ethical system assumes none to be right or wrong. It sees ethical stand as distributive and renders the system as a platform for justified delivery systems where everyone gets their share of results from their actions. It does not concentrate how much of what one gets as a result of the entitlementadopting an ethical system. Rather, it focuses on making the system itself functional and solid, relative to the key ethical questions of emerging distributed ethical interpretations. The duty based ethical system is rather partial as it completely overlooks the outcome. It accounts only for what a person does in terms of his actions

BHSF’s Ethical Codes & Practices

Upon a systematic inquiry of BHSF’s ethical practices, the system, the codes and the modes of delivery of ethical practice are identified. BHSF’s code of ethics entitles its employees and contractors. It assigns certain leadership role with specific responsibilities. The organization claims to not to engage in any unlawful and unethical activities; employees are expected to comply with policies and procedures; patient care is governed on the basis of health care need than financial consideration; they have an established criteria for charity care and make HR personnel available to other employees in cases of conflicting and confusing situations. BHSF also calls its management to report harassment to HR whenever they are notified or can identify such cases. For workplace safety they have on-site proactive injury prevention system. The organization allows approved individuals to practice in BHSF facilities and donations are solely the jurisdiction of the Baptist Health Foundation and so on.

BHSF Code of Ethics for Employees, Contractors & Management

Employees: It forces employees to comply with its regulations and standardized operational procedures. BHSF has created an annual provision for ethical compliance revision and training. A declaration of understanding the ethical practices is an administrative mandatory part for employees of BHSF.
Contractors: The contracts share the similar system like the employees who have to declare their compliance and need to follow the laid procedural routes set by the BHSF. They too are entitled for annual review and training.
Management: BHSF management is entrusted with specific roles which include them to become an example of the BHSF ethical system. They need to create highest ethical standards, aware their subordinates encourage and enforce the ethical policy enactments and refrain from retaliating from accused anyone.

Why the Code of Ethics is used?

Upon a review of the code of ethics of the Baptist Health South Florida, it is evident that the ethical system has more generalized scopes in addressing its moral integrity; so it does not suit for circumstantial disputes. For instance, the on-site injury prevention does not always validate any measure to get validated in crisis moments. In crisis moments the preventive measures revisions would be necessary. The generalization of its code of ends driven ethical system certainly been reasoned by its span of stakeholder involvement and abiding laws like a health service provider needs to fulfill the laws, the requirements of the patients, the doctors, its own organizational structure and at the same time it needs to go adaptive with technology and new forms of medications whether medicinal or clinical. The generalization has made the code of ethics easily communicable to everyone.

How the Code of Ethics is used?

Further, looking into its usage, it is interesting to note that the application is quite an imposition as the system is less receptiveness. The firm shows less structural willingness in modifying or updating the codes it. Only a time based approach is adopted in its revision and review. Such revisions are incorporated on an annual basis, irrespective of roles is played by individuals. Further with regards to the usage, we find that individuals are expected of complying with the governing rules set in light of the code of ethics of BHSF however the management and HR department were ascertained much weight in the matter. Since employees and contractors will be working closely with the team and in linear management styles, fitting the practices involving the line managers and respective supervisors can help BHSF to get greater results in implementing the code.

When the Code of Ethics is used?

As mentioned earlier that the code of ethics is incorporated in a generalized manner as a practice and the system, therefore it suits most of the operational and functional schedules. It does not have any time sensitivity, but every one of BHSF is expected to work towards the sought ethical stand and result irrespective of their crisis situations. Certainly this can be viewed as relax mechanism, though it was wiser on BHSF’s management’s part to put things under their and the respective HR department’s sole discretion.

Change with Code of Ethics, Requirements, Reactions, Remedies

Regarding the modification of the code of ethics of BHSF, it should make more duty driven where the end result will not be the concern of the actors but their actions will always be scrutinized in ethical paradigm. This will meet the crisis situation demand. Also, it will encourage proactive mechanism to assess employees, contractors and management’s ethical practice. At the same time, a joint ombudsman and amnesty can be endorsed for BHSF staff, management and contractors step forward in relieving their guilt conscious. This will help BHSF to continually assess the effectiveness of the code of ethics as the present one is efficient one but not highly effective.
While making the changes in the code of ethics, it must be made more interpretable in terms of functional capacity, else it can create organizational dissatisfaction. However, a guided orientation and simplification will assist in the effective implementation of the changes. More importantly involving the peers to monitor the employees at closer levels will greatly improve the outcome. It will also make them to become receptive to the change and the organizational culture will thus be highly improved.
Reviewing the structural competence of BHSF in meeting the goal laid forward by its code of ethics, we can see that it has not facilitated its structural interventions and communication policy to favor the fundamental working mandated by the code of ethics. Having a code of ethics alone will not change the situation as long the organization system, leadership style, control, audit and communication systems are not revised accordingly. As said earlier, such code will stay in the papers and become a tool for victimizing the employees and contractors. In our proposed approach such victimization will be eliminated when another organization wide change will be implemented.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is clear that the code of ethics of BHSF lacks in terms of its monitoring mechanism. Also, it does not have a proper or appropriate organizational structure. Nevertheless, its communication strategy and the management’s leadership styles are properly defined by the onset of its ethical goal. It is rather simplified in terms of the ethical practice. The ethical practice is generalized when it comes to implementation. So it is easy to implement it in general situations. Issues could be faced when the code of ethics has to be used for righteous purposes at it could get harder for them to effectively utilize the codes. The system is not backed by standard operational procedures to support the incorporation of the code itself, but the management ensures ethics plays a major role in their firm level decision making process. Thus, after much consideration as discussed and detailed above, it is notable, the code of ethics of Baptist Health South Florida lacks in a few areas. As of now, it is used well in relation to organizational intervention in ensuring ethical practices. It would require an overhaul with the code, its structure and organizational functioning system to generate improved results.

Works Cited

Calkins, M. (2014). Aristotle's Virtue Ethics. In Developing a Virtue-Imbued Casuistry for Business Ethics (pp. 73-105). Amsterdam: Springer Netherlands.
Fiala, A., & MacKinnon, B. (2012). Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues. Stamford: Cengage Learning.
Leigh, H. (2014). Systems and Ethical Issues in CL Psychiatry: Hospital as a Social System, Sick Role and Doctor Role, Ethical and Legal Issues. Springer International Publishing.