PPD-6 Professionalism & Ethics
Reflection 1
Empathy is mostly defined as the ability to understand and share other peoples’ feelings. As William Zellmer rightly described, ‘empathy comes in path from a person’s orientation and experience. I have developed my empathy to this point by using both my orientation, and experiences both as a person and a student pharmacist. I come from a society where healthcare and medication is a luxury, and having lost so many close family members to many diseases most often due to lack of proper care and medication, I understand the power of proper medication use. My experiences as a student pharmacist, which includes learning about different diseases, and how to manage them including my work as a volunteer providing free medical services to
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One occasion where I believe I used all the principles of ethics is at the health fair for low income families described above.
• Beneficence: this principle of ethics charges the practitioner to ‘do good,’ my actions with this person and other participants at the health fair was do good by providing them with health services such as free blood pressure, and glucose screening including providing education.
• Maleficence: The priority of this ethical principle is to ‘do no harm.’ After screening this participant and was told by my colleague that he has dangerously elevated blood pressure, and glucose, I quickly discussed with the patients that he needs to seek medical attention immediately; however, he did not have money or insurance, and he said he will be better since he can’t afford to seek medical care. Being faced with the options of him suffering complication based on his screening result, and his inability to pay for the care, I advise that we chose the least harmful option of seeking medical attention even if he is unable to pay