Where is the door to leave your emotions at? Where is the line we cannot cross? Where is my mask to hide my morals and show my ethics?
The door and lines all blur together sometimes, making it difficult to think about morals and to act within ethical considerations. It’s easy to say you’re a strong person that can always leave your beliefs and opinions behind when working with a difficult patient, but it is a totally different scenario when you actually have to be that strong person in reality.
Ethics derives from, the Greek word “ethicos” which means arising from custom or from the French word “ethos” meaning custom (Pagare, 2019). How do you arise from custom, perform like society expects of you to perform, when every inch of your being is screaming with discomfort?
I’ve been in the unfortunate situation where I had to assess and treat one of my colleges’ patients and the entire 45 minutes from the first introduction to the last sentence was as uncomfortable as wearing brand new high heels for the first time. It wasn’t a life threatening, xenophobia, disease contagious type situation, it was clearly just am unexpected discomfort for the both of us. The patient couldn’t sit down for the subjective examination, he always had to fidget with something and couldn’t look at me when he was answering. If I took one step towards him, he would take two steps back. There was always something between us. On my physical examination it was pure torture for him, every time I tried to touch him, he would flinch and his body would tense up. His behaviour made me uncomfortable and I had to improvise with a hands-off routine.
Ethics, is the code written or unwritten that guides the behaviour of human beings, in the context of different cultures and situations. This moral code may vary from society to society. However there are certain aspects that hold good in every situation. The application of these principles would be dependent on the person and the situation. In short it is a judgment call (Pagare, 2019). I am normally a neutral person in the clinical field, I don’t judge, I don’t preach, and I definitely wouldn’t make a nervous person feel awkward. However, my morals were all wrong in the above situation and I couldn’t improve. I tried my best to treat this Pakistan patient with the best hands-off, electronic techniques, but I knew I was not choosing the most appropriate treatment techniques for the best outcome, I was choosing my treatment techniques based on my discomfort caused by my patients behaviour towards me.
The dimension of moral strength was emphasised in physiotherapists’ self-evaluations of their moral sensitivity (Kulju, 2013). I was able to understand my situation and reflect appropriately on my morals and ethical disturbances. Discomfort has a solution, however beliefs and cultures are much more complex to work with. As a conclusion, ethical problems do occur not only at individual level but also at organisational and society level (Kulju, 2013). We as health care professionals are taught regularly about ethics and morals and its quick sand grounds its built on, unfortunately we just have to place a coat hanger outside our door and leave our beliefs hanging, we have to find the line and mark it brightly, and last but not least, we have to find our inner Mona Lisa and show up with a neutral personality.
References
Kulju, K. S.-K. (2013). Ethical problems and moral sensitivity in physiotherapy: a descriptive study. PubMed , 568- 577.
Pagare, V. A. (2019, September). Ethics . Retrieved from Physio- Pedia : https://www.physio-pedia.com/Ethics
3 thoughts on “3 Imaginary Questions”
Hi Wiana,
Well done on a good written piece.
You cover a relevant topic that has been discussed.
I am unsure exactly how your three questions stated in the beginning link up with the rest of the text? maybe try have a more obvious connection between the two.
“Where is my mask to hide my morals and show my ethics?” – try rephrase this: Where is my mask to hide my morals and the line to guide me between right or wrong.This is just a suggestion – I think you should try use another word than ethics in that sentence.
Paragraph 2: instead of ethical considerations you could say “ethical boundaries”.
paragraph 4: ” It wasn’t a life threatening” – instead say life threatening situation. “am unexpected” – an unexpected
Try change paragraph 5 to be more formal, academic writing.
Otherwise, A well written piece with good referencing. Well done
Hello
Thank you for the piece!
Content – Relevant topic that was covered in class. You have literacy to explain around your topic but would be nice as well to include a few more points to back up your topic. I would like to know on how you solved the situation or explain better ways on communication that you could of used? What was the cause of the this “uncomfortable” atmosphere, was it the culture?background?belief?personality, I believe it is not clearly stated
Argument – It states and links with the topic. But I don’t find a clear argument on how ethics goes beyond a superficial level and into more organisational/society level. It feels the text is explaining the situation and how you felt which is good but it doesn’t explain from where it is effected, what actually contributed to this uncomfortable atmosphere that links to this level e.g. What background? what religion? what kind of culture(what is a Pakistan culture?) that is contributing to this argument but this is all opinions that may be followed or ignored ?
Reference – Good references but a few more will back up the text would help a lot and picture linking with the piece is great.
Spelling/ grammer – I did not see any grammar mistake, as I am also bad with language but I believed there isn’t errors with the a nice flow. I did think that you have very long sentences with a lot of commas in, shortening will be better?
Thank you for the piece and this is not negative in all means! Hope you enjoy your holiday!
Sorry for late reply, the website service issues ?
-Steve
Hi Wiana, Thank you for sharing your experience.
Content : This experince is deffinetley something we all face even though we have many lectures it is really up to use to discern each situation you are so right. The content is good howver i think make an explicit link between you 3 questions to either you content or answer them at the end. I would also like to know more about how the patient was towards other health care professionals or how was his mood when he came in, and also did you maybe ask him why he felt this way/ try to reassure him?
Argument : I would like to read more about what your ethics standards was before incident( which you stated that all people should be treated fairly) and also what you learned – elaborate more. also i don’t think it is necessary to mention nationality of patient unless you back it up with literature that maybe states how people from diff nationality feel being treated in a country not their own? maybe this would explain is uneasiness ?
Reference : very good referencing
Spelling/ grammar – I have commented using the annotate (hypothosis)
very interesting read, thank you and good luck.