BIOECTHICS NOTES 3

THE CALLING OF THE HEALTH CARE PROVIDER

1. Health Care Profession – is an occupation requiring advanced, specialized, and
systematic study and training in the knowledge of health care designed to provide
services to society in that particular filed.
- Represented by physicians, nurses, medical technologists etc. It is loaded with a lot
of sensitivities and vulnerabilities since it deals with the highest form of value…life.
2. The Client – the recipient of the health care delivery system
3. Health Care Provider – is one who has acquired on advanced, specialized, and
systematic training and experience in the knowledge of health care along with its
various specific scientific specialization and techniques including those of medical
doctors, nurses, midwives, medical technologists, and the like
- Also termed as Health care Professional or practitioner
4. Health Care Provider – Client relationship
- It is a relationship between the health care practitioner and his patient (Therapeutic)
- Develops in the process of communication or interaction primarily characterized by
the exchange of language or message whatever forms it may take including acts of
administering health care services thereby promoting understanding and rapport
among people in the health care environment

Major Components of the Therapeutic Interaction

1. The health care practitioners
2. The client/patient
3. Health care and the contents of the interaction
4. Environment
5. The outcome

I. The health Care Practitioners

- They are the ones in control of the situation simply because they determine what
appropriate therapy or health care should administered
- They are responsible in the adjustments of health care measure according to the
problems and needs of the client
- They should reach out, open the relationship, and work with the client until the
entire process of therapy is over.

Basic attitudes of a Health Care Provider:

a. Caring and warmth
Caring - more enduring and intense than warmth
- It conveys deep and genuine concern for the person
- Makes the client feel highly regarded, tended and protected
Warmth – conveys friendliness and consideration, shown by acts of smiling and
attention to physical comforts
b. Comforting – is one who provides the client relief from discomfort which
includes feelings of distress, pain, sorrow, grief and others
- Consoles the patient in times of trouble, cheers her up, and makes her
feeling stronger and reinvigorated.
c. Courteous – treats the patient with propriety and consideration
- Conscientiously observes patient’s rights by doing what is good and
avoiding what is harmful to the patient
 d. Affirming, Accepting, and loving
- These attitudes disclosure a receiving, appreciating, and welcoming,
atmosphere making the client spontaneously honest in the expression of
his thoughts and feelings
- Allows the patient to ventilate his biases and prejudices, his needs and
problems in a non-judgmental manner

II. The Client/Patient

- Has a health problem or need which must be accurately identified through
diagnostic procedures so that due health care may be given
- Are encouraged to take active role in the therapeutic process
- Outcome of the therapy largely depends on how the patient is open and
amenable to the interaction along with the competence of the health care
provider and the effectiveness of health care services

III. Health care and the Contents of the Interaction

Health care – is the very means employed to address the identified health problems
and needs of the client
- It is administered in various forms of health services corresponding to the
different levels of disease prevention in the maintenance and sustenance
- It focuses on prevention of illness and promotion of health among clients who
are, generally in good health and want to maintain healthy status an optional
level
IV. Environment
- Includes among others, home or hospital environment together with other
members of the family, co-patient, other health care providers, visitors, weather
and atmosphere, and physical set-up of the place.
V. The Outcome
- Is the expected result of the therapeutic interaction
- Maybe perceived unsuccessful when further health deterioration leading to the
patient’s irrevocable death becomes the scenario

Practitioner-Client Relationships
- To make the therapeutic interaction take place smoothly towards a successful outcome,
health care practitioner-client relationships must be built and promoted

Some of the essential ways by which HCP-Client relationship can be established:

1. Develop trust and confidence
2. Inspire openness and transparency
3. Show positive regard and respect
4. Provide emphatic listening and responding
- Can be described as listening not just by ears and responding by mouth or gestures
but most significantly by heart
- May be in place when the health care provider:
a. Understands, feels, and experiences the way the client does
b. Looks at the client from the point of view not of the health care provider but of
the client himself
c. Gets not just the accurate meaning behind the message and information set by
the client but also the feelings and state of emotions conveyed through facial
expressions, bodily movements and tone of voice.
 d. Provides the most necessary health care response not because it is what the
health care profession prescribes but because it is what the patient truly needs

VIRTUES, VICES, & HABITS OF A HEALTH CARE PROVIDER

1. VIRTUE - is understood as the faculty of the human person to choose what is good
against what is deemed to be bad or evil is understood as the faculty of the human
person to choose what is good against what is deemed to be bad or evil.
- It comes from the Roman word vir which means “man”.
2. VICE - is considered immoral, depraved or degrading act to all the members in a given
society.
- It comes from the Latin word vitium which means “failing or defect”.
- Vice is considered the product of a repeated sinful act.
3. HABIT – is defined as a constant, easy way of doing things acquired by the repetition of
the same act.
2 DISTINCTIONS:
a. Entitative Habits - are habits of being. (Connatural qualities, like, strength, beauty,
and such)
b. Operative Habits - means habit of acting. (Tendencies we have developed in us
from repeated acts.)
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF HABITS:
a. Habits do not destroy voluntariness, and actions performed by the force of habit
are imputable to man
b. If habit has been acquired involuntarily, like the habit of using profane language
during childhood, the existence of the habit and the acts which proceeds
unintentionally from it will lack voluntariness and responsibility so long as the
agent remains ignorant of the existence of the habit
c. If an evil habit has been acquired voluntarily, but a positive, constant effort is
being made to dispel it, the acts that proceed from the habits are involuntary;
hence, they are not to be imputed to the agent.

VIRTUES OF THE HEALTH CARE PROVIDER

1. Fidelity
2. Honesty
3. Integrity
4. Humility
5. Respect
6. Compassion
7. Prudence
8. Courage

VICES OF THE HEALTH CARE PROVIDER

1. Fraud
2. Pride
3. Greed