Week 3 Discussion 1 Ethical Standards

Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Reference the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

Ethical Standards

Option A: Imagine you are a health information manager in a hospital setting. Your facility has purchased an electronic health record (EHR) system. During the testing period, you and your staff discover that the EHR system does not comply with applicable federal policy and security standards. Pressure is mounting to deploy the system in the near future. (Case Study, p. 105)This discussion has two options. Please choose either Option A or Option B to respond to. Be sure you indicate within your post which option you chose.

How should you proceed? What ethical issues should you consider in making your decision? Using the steps in the ethical decision-making process as your framework, describe the multiple influences on your decision and discuss the steps you will take to resolve this issue.

Option B: As noted in Chapter 5 of your textbook, “Understanding what constitutes ethics requires learning about various models, concepts, and theories. This understanding assists the learner to identify ethical challenges and determine how to resolve the dilemmas posted in varying situations” (McWay, 2010).
Provide an overview of the chief ethical standards and concepts (i.e., autonomy, justice, etc.). Why are these concepts important in health care? What role do they play in health information management, specifically? Define and describe the two categories of ethical theories. How do these principles collectively help us to deal with ethical dilemmas?

Guided Response (for Option A and Option B): Review several of your classmates’ posts. Provide a substantive response to at least two of your peers, one who selected Option A and one who selected Option B. Discuss the ways in which you and your peers differ in your approach to ethical challenges and dilemmas. What is their rationale for the impact of ethical concepts and theories on the ethical decision making process? Do you agree or disagree with their analysis? Why?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.