Ethical Issues In The Emergency Room

Throughout the book, there were many ethical dilemmas uncovered, some include a nurse telling Pete to lie to get Mike treatment, jail guards participating in physical violence against inmates, and a doctor failing to treat someone mentally ill because of laws that are in place. These all raise the question, what is the morally right thing to do? Individuals that are mentally ill deserve treatment, however there are laws that are meant to aid a patient, yet can get in the way. For example, the patient’s right to refuse can get in the way, because if a mental ill patient is clearly delusional refuses treatment, the doctor cannot do anything about it; unless the patient is in danger to themselves or others, and/or gravely disabled.

Considering

Montross, goes on to describing another issue that revolves around how psychiatric patients are treated. She discusses how patients that are brought to the emergency room, while psychiatric beds are not available, tend to be discharged without medications and an adequate follow up plan. In other words, these patients are just thrown back out into the streets (Montross pg 1407). This will result in the patient continuing to act out, due to their symptoms that relate to their condition, and then will end up back at the hospital. It is a never-ending cycle, and health care professionals, are not appropriately assisting these patients. This could be due to laws, the stigma of the mentally ill, and/or the health care provider does not feel there is anything they can do for this patient. Regardless, all patients deserve to be treated equally, thus this disconnect between the health care system and the legal system need to be changed. In addition to scholarly evidence, the student nurse, T. Z., has personal experience of witnessing the disconnect between the mental health care and the legal system, and lack of adequate treatment for the mentally ill. The student nurse, T. Z., observed a teenage patient at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, simply be “detained” at the facility because of court orders. Once the patient’s time is up, they will be allowed to leave, yet many of them claim that once they are done with treatment that they are going to go back to using drugs. Depending on their program, most of them stay around 45 days, then they may go back to using. They can extend their stay if the patient requests it, yet some do not have the insight to do so, and therefore the treatment may fail. This is not helping the patient, because once they are done, they can go back to using. This observation demonstrates how