H.C. Ethics Week 4

This week my boyfriend had a knee surgery, so I wanted to wait until it was over so I could write about it on my blog. My boyfriend had a torn muscle in his knee, his surgery was to repair the muscle and remove scar tissue and build up associated from the injury. His surgery took place in an ambulatory surgery center. We were scheduled to be there at 7:45am. We were in the car on the way home by 11:00am. The surgery itself was about an hour. The facility was easy to walk around in, lots of signs directing the patients and visitors where to go. The employees at the facility were very friendly, informative and caring. I was very pleased with the way I was treated as well as my boyfriend. When discharged we received detailed directions on how to care of the injury, we also received a follow up phone call to check in. Although I do not have many experiences at a health care facility to compare this one to, I believe the service was excellent and my boyfriend and I are satisfied with the outcome. I did encounter one ethical situation. When the doctor finished surgery he came out to the waiting room to talk to me. Due to patient confidentiality the doctor asked me to follow him into a room to update me on the situation an discuss the outcome of the surgery and the state of the patient. The doctor upheld his ethical duty of respecting a patients privacy by bringing me into a different room to keep our conversation private.

I noticed something interesting while sitting in the waiting room. A older couple entered the facility and had a hard time hearing the receptionist. Therefore the receptionist spoke very loudly with the patient. During the conversation the receptionist made it a point to tell the patient that the facility was an ambulatory setting and that her advanced directive, living will, could not be honored there because it was not a hospital. The interesting part was the receptionist did not mentioned this to my boyfriend during check in. I wondered whether this was an issues of equality. Was the receptionist treating the patients differently because they were older or my boyfriend because he was younger? Then I wondered why the organization did not honor advanced directives, why would they not give the patients the choice , why was the organization was not interested in the values and the wishes of the patient.