Guilty of an Ethical violation
The local newspaper has published a letter to the editor (found on page two of this document) arguing that the hospital you work for is guilty of an ethical violation. You are on the hospital’s ethics committee. The director of the hospital comes to you and requests that you provide her with an analysis of the argument the letter writer is making. This is a serious matter, so be prepared to do some detailed and highly focused work. Your boss is a demanding one, but she is understanding and will be grateful to you for any help you can provide even if you are uncertain on some points. Do the best you can. Submit your work product to Prof. Wagner as a WORD file.
Your boss asks you to present your analysis of the letter to the editor’s argument in the form of a list of statements setting out, in complete sentences, each of the following:
- The argument’s claim of a wrongful act: ________________________.
- The argument’s conclusion in the form of a judgment that the hospital’s action is wrongful for a specific reason: __________________________.
- The normative premise or premises directly and indirectly supporting this conclusion: __________________________.
- The factual premise or premises directly and indirectly supporting this conclusion: __________________________.
- The logical inter-relationships connecting the various factual and normative premises both to one another and to the argument’s ultimate conclusion:______________________.
As you complete the list, she also asks you to place a label after statement on the list as follows:
- After each normative and factual premise, (sound) or (unsound).
- After each logical inference the writer of the letter draws of a conclusion from a premise, [valid] or [invald].
In addition, she asks you provide a short of list of:
- Any emotional utterances included in the letter that are unverifiable and therefore do not qualify as a premise, i.e., supporting reason.
PAGE TWO
Letter to the Editor
Central Hospital of Milwaukee makes good people angry, and it makes decent people weep. This hospital has committed an unethical act. You may wonder why I say so. This letter explains. My cousin Mandy Mankowski arrived at the hospital ER at midnight on June 4. She was in what turned out to be an acute health crisis. The hospital sent her away untreated. She died three hours later. The triage nurse, at the time, said that all the available beds had to be allocated to victims of a multi-car accident that had just occurred on the interstate.
It is true that several of these victims required immediate care, but frankly several of them died even after receiving care. My cousin was only complaining of a stomachache, but if the hospital had accepted her as a patient, tests could have been done that would have revealed that she had acute appendicitis. The hospital is subject to the ethical standards set out in the Wisconsin Licensing of Hospitals Act. The section of that Act dealing with Triage (principles governing the allocation of scarce hospital resources) say that a hospital with limited health resources has a duty to allocate these resources to their patients in the following order:
1) first priority goes to those in known acute danger of death or permanent
disability who have a reasonable chance of survival.
2) second priority goes to those who show serious signs of being in such acute danger and
require diagnostic testing to ascertain the degree of the danger; and
3) third priority goes to those who are facing almost certain death and treatment
stands virtually no chance of success.
It was unethical for this reckless and unfeeling hospital to prioritize patients who were clearly in the third category over my cousin who was in the second category.
When asked about her symptoms, my cousin said, “O its nothing, just a stomachache. The people in the wreck are more important.” But the hospital has a duty to examine patients scientifically before making a judgment about the seriousness of their health status. Any intern would have seen on even a superficial examination that my cousin showed all the symptoms of acute appendicitis. I was shocked that the hospital answered my accusations by saying that their duty applied only to “patients” and that my cousin was not yet a patient because she had not yet checked in to the hospital.
In conclusion, I furiously oppose this hospital
