Being a health care professional some of our duties include being respectful towards patient, equality and no discrimination but one of the most important is promoting health and well being of our patients (Schröder-Bäck, Duncan, Sherlaw, Brall, & Czabanowska, 2014).
I recently have had a lot conflict with promoting health and not causing harm. As students we are placed in rural areas such Gugulethu, Mitchells Plain, Eerste river and Khayelitsha. In these areas there are a lot of violence and some areas are flooded with gang members. Not just are there gang violence but violence due to mental diseases and some of these placements facilitate for these type of patients. During one of my placements the clinician told us to be aware of the patients that tend to get violent and also to always to keep our eye on suspicious patients in the emergency unit. The clinician said to us that if someone were to attack us we are not allowed to retaliate and should try to calm the situation as it is our ethical duty to not cause harm. Some journal articles have tried to highlight what a clinician should do during an attack. Kanjaksha Ghosh implied that a doctor should train himself/herself for anxiety alleviation techniques (Ghosh, 2018).
The cartoon displays two aspects a boxer and a boxing bag. The boxer is punching a bag and the bag can not retaliate as it is not a living organism, this is the literal meaning but the figurative meaning is the bag being a clinician and the boxer an attacking patient. Just like a bag the clinician does not retaliate or is not meant to retaliate but this is due to the clinician being bound to its core ethical competencies. I feel like this is an ethical dilemma as if a patient attacks me, my natural instinct would be to defend myself and I have the right to protect myself if i feel my life is in danger and disarm the patient even though this is not the way n which a clinician should react but in instances like such you cannot control your reactions but what would happen if you do not defend yourself, some patients can be a danger.
This ethical dilemma faced with here is: if it would be unethical for me to protect myself in an instance if attacked by a patient?
3 thoughts on “Is it unethical to protect myself…”
It was very well written, just try working on the last paragraph and try to limit some repeating the same statement. Maybe try also expanding the piece a bit more.
Justin Slinger
On your second paragraph you did mention that these are not just gang violence patients but also mental illness patients, I think you can expand your dilemma by looking on both sides to show empathy on mental illness patients and yes on protecting ourselves when such happens. I understand that the ethical approach of clinical practice sometimes only protects the patient and not the clinician. Nonetheless it is well written indeed and try to capture the empathy approach to situation too, did this happen to you? and how did it make you feel.
Hi Wian, I think you could do more to elaborate on the ethical dilemma and linking it to the scenario you described in more in details.