podcast take 2

The podcast discusses the presence of discrimination in the healthcare field, particularly related to race and socioeconomic status. The guest shares a personal experience of witnessing discrimination towards a black patient. The conversation then shifts to the relevance of religious beliefs in healthcare and the challenges faced when considering patients' needs and ethical standards. The guest also shares a difficult ethical dilemma involving a healthcare proxy and a patient in severe pain. The podcast concludes with a discussion on protecting patient confidentiality while also addressing potential risks to others. Overall, the podcast emphasizes the need for improvement in healthcare practices and the importance of considering both patients' health and personal beliefs. Alrighty, our next question is, would you say that you've seen discrimination within the healthcare field hasn't changed? How? I feel like I definitely see a lot of discrimination in the healthcare field. A lot of the discrimination I see is with race and socioeconomic status. I feel like it hasn't necessarily changed since I got into the field only a couple years ago. I would hope that people are just becoming more aware and individually working toward themselves, even though I don't see something on the grander scale being worked towards, such as large initiatives to eliminate these disparities and discrimination. For example, one of my patients last week at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless was in for something that would have been preventable, but he told me himself that because he was a black man, they thought he was being dramatic and just trying to get a bed because of his socioeconomic status and his race. And had he been treated properly, he wouldn't have ended up needing long-term care in the first place. So that was just really disheartening to see. Yeah, that's so terrible to hear. It's really unfortunate that people who are seeking out healthcare for help aren't receiving it in the way that they deserve to. And I definitely agree that we see some change. It's definitely talked about more, and it's definitely brought up more. But I think that there could still be a lot of work done to actually apply it to the healthcare field. So how are the ethics of healthcare affected when we consider people's religious beliefs? And are people's religious beliefs relevant when considering legal and ethical standards in the medical field? People's religious beliefs are definitely documented in the systems that we use to track patients. And it's often up to the provider how much information they give about procedures. But a lot of times the more commonly known procedures that conflict with someone's religious belief are known by the doctors and the nurses on the floor. For example, some people don't want to eat certain things or take certain pills because they have pork products in them. Or with their religion, they do not agree with getting blood products. So those major things are usually noted. And otherwise we try to give as much information as possible so that people do feel like their religious beliefs matter. Right. Yeah, I think it's definitely important to recognize people's background and their religion. It just kind of helps make healthcare more personable, but also for sure considering their needs. Getting a little bit more personal, what's the most challenging moral dilemma you have faced in healthcare and how did you deal with it? One of the most challenging ethical dilemmas I've faced in healthcare is probably between a healthcare proxy and a patient who isn't able to verbalize how they're feeling. So I had a scenario where one of my patients was in excruciating pain. She was nearing the end of her life and her healthcare proxy was very against using opioids for pain because they had a history of opioid use disorder in their family. And they didn't want the patient becoming addicted to the pain medication. And in that scenario, I understood where the proxy was coming from. And obviously we have to listen to what the proxy says, but the nursing team was discussing getting ethics involved just because the patient was in so much pain and was nearing the end of her life. And it seemed unethical to us to be allowing a patient in our care to be in such excruciating pain without the proxy seeming to fully understand the extent of the pain that the patient was in. Yeah, I think that's so hard for someone to have such a hard and difficult responsibility. But at the same time, it's such an important role to have, especially for the healthcare providers where if someone is a set proxy, there's not much you can do about their decision, whether you agree with it or not, based on how effective their decision might be for the proxy. And lastly, how have or how would you deal with protecting a patient's confidentiality when the unknown info can put others at risk? Although I haven't technically encountered this myself, we talk about it a lot because it's relevant, especially with the population I work with because a lot of them have potentially been exposed to HIV or other illnesses that can be contracted through sharing needles. So something we talk about is letting the person in danger know that they're in danger without telling them who the sickness could have been contracted from. So the Department of Public Health is really good about letting people know that they may have been exposed to something and they should be screened without necessarily saying the name and leaving it up to the person who may have spread the illness to decide if they want to let that information be shared or not. Yeah, and I think that's really important because people should know the risks that they're coming into. Although it's important to protect someone's wishes, I think it's better for everyone to be safe rather than sorry. As we hear, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in the healthcare field, whether it's between the physicians, policies, or everything in between. As important as it is to consider people's health needs, it's also important to consider their personal needs and everything that they stand for and believe in. Thank you so much for joining us today, Kara. I really enjoyed hearing from you and learning about your experiences. I think it puts a lot of perspective into how we can continue to do better and grow in the healthcare field. Thank you so much for having me on. If the listeners are interested, feel free to tune into my blog and learn more about my work. You can find all of Kara's information in the description below. I also want to thank everyone for tuning in. Please be sure to look out for the next episode where we'll be talking about the topic of genetic testing. Subscribe to my channel and share the podcast to help spread the awareness. Well, that's it for today's episode, and I hope you'll join me next time. Bye-bye! For today's podcast, we're going to take a deep dive on the ethics in healthcare and establish how ethics can affect healthcare and how patients are treated. As we know, there are plenty of discrepancies in healthcare, along with discrimination that can be found. This brings about a lot of ethical debate in healthcare, creating a split or divide. It can also tend to create division from patient to physician and can affect the way that people receive treatment. My hope is that through today's podcast, you'll get valuable insight on the practice and application of ethics in healthcare through our amazing guest. One of the most challenging moral dilemmas I think I've faced in healthcare is with healthcare proxies and trying to get them to fully understand how a patient is feeling when the patient isn't. Thank you.