Ethical Analysis Sample Clauses

Ethical Analysis. The hypothesis for this research project is that stigma against the homeless population manifests during inpatient hospitalizations as inferior quality of care. From the data above, one can see that quality of care general metrics from the retrospective chart review do not necessarily support this hypothesis. However, when looking at the patient perspective, one can see that participating homeless individuals report a more unfavorable experience with their hospitalization, particularly as it relates to their patient satisfaction scores and provider-patient relationship, particularly regarding communication. This research and the subsequent results demonstrate that the homeless continue to be stigmatized even within an inpatient setting, and this stigmatization may impact the quality of their care. This effect then violates principles and tenants of social justice ethics. The data above presents interesting results regarding the scope of the care affected by stigmatization. Per the retrospective chart review, although it has limitations as a true proxy for care quality, homeless individuals are not severely adversely affected by the stigma. Prima facie, they are treated approximately the same as their non-homeless counterparts. In fact, the only significant differences in the retrospective review include the time between the written history and physical (H&P) note by the resident and the attending attestation, the use of personality descriptors, and the use of the urine drug screen (UDS) on admission. Again, the time it takes for the attending attestation may not necessarily impact the care quality patients receive, but as described previously, this data may reflect an overall pattern of decreased responsiveness toward this particular group of people by the healthcare team. A possible hypothesis regarding personality descriptors is that they may perpetuate stigmatization of the patient within the medical record, though there is very little evidence in the literature to demonstrate that this actually occurs. Further research should be done to investigate uses and implications of personality descriptor usage by providers. For example, providers utilize personality descriptors to give a well-rounded look at the patient and provide valuable information to the providers looking at the medical record, but disparities in usage between the homeless and non-homeless cohort seems to reflect implicit biases. In regard to the use of the UDS, in reviewing this data, it ...