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(ROCKVILLE, MD-October 15, 2004) Health care service providers providing home care rehabilitation services are often confronted by ethical dilemmas involving clients and their families, professional colleagues, or personal and professional values. From a multi-disciplinary perspective, a speech-language pathologist, physical therapist, and occupational therapist will examine case examples and provide strategies to assist health care providers and managers in resolving these dilemmas during a session entitled "Ethical Challenges for Rehab Professionals and Managers" at the National Association for Home Care (NAHC) Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.
"This session will help practitioners meet their ethical challenges on the job," said Janet Brown, MA, CCC-SLP, director of health care services for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and presenter at the session. "We all respond to calls from practitioners facing ethical dilemmas. Rather than offer a quick and simple answer, we believe that offering a model for problem-solving will enable practitioners to come to the best resolution for patients and themselves for both present and future situations."
The session will use specific case examples and cover issues, such as:
- differences between legal, ethical, and practice issues
- what resources practitioners and managers can use to identify whether a problem is an ethical one
- how professional code of ethics help to identify and resolve ethical issues
- how teams can work together to resolve ethical issues with families
- how individual competency and scope of practice relate to ethics
- Reimbursement or administrative pressures, such as when practitioners are asked to justify therapy sessions for someone who is a poor therapy candidate is a good example of an ethical dilemma faced by health care providers" said Brown.
Additional scenarios include:
- practitioners who have patients at high risk for injury who live alone and are not allowed to communicate with family members because of the confidentiality laws
- practitioners whose patients' families seem to ignore recommendations for minimizing risks at home and do the opposite
- practitioners who write discharge summaries stating no progress has been made and find the physician writes orders for additional therapy
- two members of the health care team disagree in their approach for developing the best intervention plan for a patient
- practitioners who are reluctant to document certain information in their progress notes because they are afraid it may result in further treatment sessions being denied
- practitioners who are new to working in a home health setting and are unfamiliar with how to assess and treat certain complex medical diagnoses
- practitioners who, in addition to contracting with a home health agency, may have a private practice and may be asked to continue providing treatment on a private basis by a patient they are discharging
While the presenters will focus on case examples in home care settings, the strategies used to guide ethical decision making are applicable to service delivery in all rehabilitation settings, according to Brown.
The NAHC Annual Meeting will be held at the Phoenix Civil Plaza Convention Center October 23-27.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 115,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Audiologists specialize in preventing and assessing hearing disorders as well as providing audiologic treatment including hearing aids. Speech-language pathologists identify, assess, and treat speech, language and swallowing problems.
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Editor's Note: Session presenter, Janet Brown, is available for interviews with reporters. Contact Mona Thomas at 301-897-0156 or mthomas@asha.org for more information.
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