Ethics Response Essay Examples

The article emphasizes the proposed ethical standards for the hospitals and health system that have issues on how to manage drug shortages, as proposed by a team of researchers at Duke University Medical Center . Specifically, drug shortages create ethical issues to any hospitals and health systems. Drug shortages occur for critical reasons such as delays, inadequate or no supply, and sub-standard quality of products. In addition, shortages can lead to elevated frustrations to health providers, purchasing agents, and patients.
The director of clinical ethics for the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, and History of Medicine at Duke, Dr. Philip M. Rosoff said that, “the idea is that there are no ‘special’ people” . Evidently, the basic principle of the proposed ethical standard is the idea of fairness. However, in the United States, most of the pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution system remains completely commoditized. In addition, the US Food and Drug Administration have a limited authority to regulate the minimal chances of severe medication shortages. Consequently, if this kind of system continues, it would be a heavy burden and challenge for the hospitals and health system to allocate the products proportionately when the demand exceeds the supply.
Ethical guidelines demonstrate similarly on accountability for reasonable; transparency, relevance, appeals, enforcement, and fairness. The implementation and development of the policy are open to everyone and it is clinically relevant to rationally acceptable reasons. Any person can challenge decisions, however, should follow the rules institutionally and no exceptional considerations.
President Obamas’s executive order encourages the manufacturers to report impending medication shortages, potential disruptions of the supply, and discontinuations of specific drugs regularly. In reporting early the potential drug shortages, it can assist the Food and Drug Administration or FDA to work harmoniously with the drug manufacturers, health providers, hospitals, and the patients to mitigate or prevent any shortages before it becomes a serious issue. Particularly, the manufacturers are required to inform the FDA any development or feedback regularly. In addition, the executive order requires the FDA to monitor suppliers, manufacturers and changes constantly to prevent shortages to happen unexpectedly.
Necessarily, the hospitals, health system, and the government should act together as a strong force to address and solve the issue on drug shortages. The specific things to do is to look for any alternative drugs to areas severely affected by the shortages, provide the evidence-based guidelines on how to deal with the event especially the health providers and patients, strictly comply the required policy of the executive order, and implement transparency to the services offered to the recipients. However, the alternative drugs cannot be obtained by the entire community needing it. On the contrary, providing the evidence-based guidelines help the patients in particular. The executive order highly considers the principle of fairness and transparency that health providers and drug manufacturers should perform.
It is best to offer the hospitals, health system, and patients the evidence-based guidelines, follow the executive order implemented by the government, and transparency of services accordingly. Through these ways, shortages of drugs, if not eliminated, can be minimized to have better quality health care system.

Works Cited

Larson, Jennifer. "Researchers Propose Standards for Managing Drug Shortages." Healthcare
News 5 October 2012: 1-2. Web. 15 April 2015. < http://www.amnhealthcare.com/latest-healthcare-news/300/1033/>.