Cultural Bias and Inflexibility as Issues in Healthcare Ethics

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Brief: Problem Description
Applicable Ethical and Moral Theories
Ethical Concerns and Potential Outcomes
Solution for Mitigating Possible Issues and Its Defense (Ethical Perspectives)
Conclusion and Recommendations
References

Introduction

Cultural differences and especially the language barrier often serve as precursors to ineffective management of a health issue. Due to language gaps and the inability to communicate crucial health-related information to the target audience, a healthcare provider may fail to meet the ethical requirement of tending to the needs of culturally diverse groups. In turn, a patient’s inability to describe a specific health issue in the language that is understood by a healthcare expert leads to the same dire outcome (Sethi & Rani, 2017). Therefore, addressing cultural biases and creating an environment in which patients’ needs are identified promptly while encouraging health literacy and promoting health awareness, needs to be seen as a priority for the present-day public health agenda.

Brief: Problem Description

The case under analysis features a situation in which the patient’s needs were overlooked due to poor communication reinforced by the internist’s unwillingness to remove the language barrier by using the services of an interpreter. Namely, the case study at hand features two main impediments to proper management of the patient’s needs, namely, the prevention of pneumonia and the identification of the symptoms thereof at an earlier stage.

Specifically, the internist’s lack of understanding of the patient’s cultural background led to the failure to isolate the issues that may have led to the development of the lung disease, particularly, the lower lobe consolidation. In addition, the patient’s poor command of English prevented her from communicating her concerns and health problems directly (“Cultural bias and inflexibility impedes communication and contributes to poor outcomes,” 2017). Overall, the case at hand indicates the absence of justice in the internist’s actions, namely, the failure to create a setting where the patient’s needs could be voiced and acknowledged.

Applicable Ethical and Moral Theories

The case at hand can be examined through the lens of several ethical theories. Applying the Ethics of Care to the case under analysis, one will realize that the foundational principle of healthcare ethics was broken in the specified scenario. Namely, the practitioner did not center the needs of the patient in his choice of actions (Corbera, Anguelovski, Honey-Rosés, & Ruiz-Mallén, 2020). Similarly, from the perspective of the Utilitarianism theory of ethics, the utility of the practitioner’s decisions should also be questioned (Fedyk, Black, Yarborough, Fairman, & Wenger, 2020).

On the one hand, hiring an interpreter would have entailed extra costs; on the other hand, the loss of the patient’s life and the subsequent lawsuit represent much more dire consequences. The described situation leads to the conclusion that pursuing complete understanding and clarity in communication should have been regarded as vital.

Furthermore, in the case described above, the foundational principles of nursing ethics, namely, beneficence and nonmaleficence, were violated. Specifically, by refusing to address the language barrier and ensure that the patient provides essential details concerning the case, the practitioner sacrificed the principles of beneficence, namely, the need to act in the best interests of the patient. Moreover, by dismissing the opportunity to introduce clarity and mutual understanding into the dialogue, the practitioner deliberately ignored potential health complications, which can be considered a breach of the nonmaleficence principle.

Ethical Concerns and Potential Outcomes

The ethical dilemma of incurring additional expenses versus mitigating a threat to a patient’s life might seem like an easy-to-solve issue. However, on further scrutiny, the problem appears to be more nuanced than it might have seemed at first. For instance, due to the increasingly high number of patients, a significant portion of whom are from culturally diverse backgrounds, healthcare experts may incur an unmanageable amount of expenses. It is understandable that failing to manage the language barrier properly is likely to lead to a failure to manage a patient’s health concern fully. However, the use of an expert’s services in each case will imply higher healthcare costs and, therefore, unavailability of essential healthcare services to the underserviced part of the population.

Solution for Mitigating Possible Issues and Its Defense (Ethical Perspectives)

Addressing the concern under analysis will require integrating the perspectives of Henderson’s Needs Theory, Nightingale’s Environment Theory, Utilitarianism, and Ethics of Care. Specifically, by using the Utilitarianism principles in the healthcare setting, a nurse will be capable of evaluating every possible solution to select the one that addresses the needs of all stakeholders involved, particularly, those of patients (Fedyk et al., 2020).

In turn, Henderson’s Needs Theory will guide a nurse practitioner toward embracing the multitude of needs that a patient has, thus introducing the scope of a specific nursing situation. Nightingale’s Environment Theory will help to identify the factors that may either contribute to or inhibit the patient’s recovery. These include primarily the factors related to communication and the associated language barriers. Finally, the Ethics of care will help to prioritize the identified needs of the patient and build the further nursing strategy based on the goals connected to improving the patient’s well-being at all costs.

Conclusion and Recommendations

In order to ensure that patients’ needs are appropriately managed, cultural disparities, primarily, language differences, must be accounted for, and the barriers to patient-nurse communication must be overcome. Otherwise, vital information about patients is likely to be overlooked, which will lead to rapid deterioration of the patient’s state. Thus, incorporating the Ethics of Care as the foundational theoretical framework and supporting it with the theories that contribute to productive cross-cultural communication are vital steps toward helping a patient recover.

References

Corbera, E., Anguelovski, I., Honey-Rosés, J., & Ruiz-Mallén, I. (2020). Academia in the time of COVID-19: Towards an ethics of care. Planning Theory & Practice, 21(2), 191-199. Web.

Cultural bias and inflexibility impedes communication and contributes to poor outcomes. (2017). NorcalGroup. Web.

Fedyk, M., Black, H., Yarborough, M., Fairman, N., & Wenger, N. S. (2020). Bioethics emergencies can be used to perform a real-world test of utilitarian policies. The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(7), 101-103. Web.

Sethi, D., & Rani, M. K. (2017). Communication barrier in health care setting as perceived by nurses and patient. International Journal of Nursing Education, 9(4), 30-35. Web.

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