In the John Cochran Division of the St Louis Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center located in St Louis, Missouri during a March 2010 healthcare inspection conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs National Infectious Diseases Program Office, it was discovered that 1,812 veterans had been possibly exposed to blood borne pathogens such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV while receiving dental at the VA center. The inspection team discovered that technicians were not always cleaning the dental tools according to the manufactures instructions. Clearly in this case, the technicians did not make the correct ethical decision; their decision to not follow protocol did not promote the greatest amount of values for the greatest number of people. They elected to safeguard against paying thousands of dollars for worn out tools over the alternative, which is safeguard the health and welfare of their shareholders – the veterans, the doctors and the organization. Congressman Russ Carnahan eloquently penned why it was so wrong in his letter to Eric Shinseki the residing Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He wrote, “No veteran who has served and risked their life for this great Nation …show more content…
It must incorporate innovative approaches to create a stronger organizational ethics culture change, quality improvement intervention, new policies, standards, tools, metrics, and on going in-house monitoring of sterilization areas the hospital can help safeguard from this type of issue from happening again. Additionally the hospital needs to take appropriate disciplinary action against all employees involved that were not performing their job’s properly, this includes not only the technicians but the head of sterile processing. Furthermore the staff must improve the training on sterilization methods, this includes the consequences of not following proper