ETHICS CASE Requests for VIP Treatment in Pathology: Implications for Social Justice and Systems-Based Practice

VIP Treatment in Healthcare
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Abstract
Nursing practitioners often experience protocol changes when treating VIP patients. Most hospital administrations tend to value VIPs over other patients, which contributes to patient neglect during care provision. In other occasions, the schedule of nursing practitioners is adversely affected when they shift attention to VIP patients. Such occurrences may result in legal, professional, and ethical consequences. Nursing practitioners can be sued, lose their jobs or their license to practice health care, and experience poor quality of care outcomes mainly due to reduced patient safety. Implications of VIP treatment can also incorporate increases patient mortality rate as non-VIP patients are forced to wait longer before being attended. To address issues related to VIP treatments, adequate education should be offered to hospital administrators to inform them of the need to maintain the standard hospital processes and systems of care. Further, patient training can be used to discourage VIP patients from expecting special treatment. Ethical issues that may relate to VIP treatment include practicing economic-oriented healthcare and failure to provide care to uninsured patients.
VIP Treatment in Pathology
VIP treatment in healthcare processes is often better than that of other people. VIP treatment can be based on financial, celebrity, and professional status. Factors such as institutional, professional, and personal factors can encourage VIP care treatment.

Institutional factors such as commands from higher authority can encourage special VIP treatment (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). Professional factors may include a patient’s relationship with the hospital such as being its financial donor. Personal relationships such as family and friends may also encourage special treatment during care. In some cases, therefore, most practitioners do not have much power to decide whether or not to engage in VIP care treatment (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). However, the practice interferes with regular care routines and may deny other patients an opportunity to receive timely care services. Further, the practice defies the ethical principle of equity in healthcare and should therefore not be considered in care practices.Impact of VIP Treatment on Nursing Practitioner Roles
In any care setting, the existence of differentiated treatment among patients can have negative implications for nursing practitioner roles. In situations where some patients are prioritized over others, it is possible that a part of the patient population is neglected (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). As a result, nursing practitioners fail to fulfill their responsibility to patients to ensure that they receive the necessary care intervention in time to prevent adverse events. Nursing practitioners are tasked with diagnosing and recommending medications for all patients (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). The practice of a nursing practitioner is usually guided by the ethical principles of care where equity is one of them. In such context, it is evident that VIP treatment of some patients defies the principle of equity in healthcare. Further, the principle of nonmaleficence requires that all healthcare practices should be aimed at producing the best results for patients (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). In situations where patients are forced to wait longer, the act of nursing practitioner does not serve the best interest of patient’s health.
Legal sections related to human life state that all lives are equally valued regardless of age and social status. Therefore, nursing practitioners break the law when they prioritize VIP patients over other people. In other occasions, patients that are neglected to allow focus on VIP patients may experience severe health deterioration, which may result in worse complications of death (Alfandre et al., 2016). On the occurrence of such, it is possible for patients or their family to file lawsuits against the practitioner. Legal claims filed against nursing practitioners may result in financial compensations while some extreme cases may force the law to revoke one’s license to practice healthcare. Besides the law, hospitals may also terminate one’s employment contract to protect the institution’s image.
Prioritizing patients on grounds other than medical urgency is professionally wrong. First of all, it is obvious that prioritizing VIP patients forces nursing practitioners to hold care processes for other patients (Alfandre et al., 2016). Patients that may require urgent care attention may experience adverse health conditions due to delayed care. In other occasions. Directing strong focus on VIP patients may take a lot of time, which would leave limited time to attend to other patients. Limited time results in increased work pressure, which creates a perfect environment for errors during care (Alfandre et al., 2016). Consequently increased errors lead to poor quality of care outcomes and affect both patient and physician safety during care. In general, the prioritization of VIP patients results in poor professional records for nursing practitioners and should be avoided.
Strategies and Positions for Addressing the Issues
Addressing the issues arising from preferential care should begin by recognizing the importance of the established hospital systems and ethical principles. Offices concerned with the development of hospitals should not be allowed to interfere with the planning and provision of care services (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). In so doing, it would be easier for practitioners to prioritize patients based on ethical aspects such as urgency and time of arrival. Further, hospital administration personnel should be informed of the possible danger of requesting prioritization of VIP patients (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). Creating such awareness can help to reduce the cases in which practitioners are subjected to neglecting other patients for the preferential care of VIP patients. Further, patient education can be used to inform VIP patients on the need to maintain hospital systems and processes. Some special treatments such as rushing biopsy results may also endanger patient health and should be discouraged (Sheffield & Smith, 2016). Hospitals should also discourage and penalize the acts of unequal patient treatment. In such cases, practitioners would experience less pressure during work and patient safety would eventually improve.
Other Ethical Issues Associated with VIP Treatment
Favoring VIP patients leads to the rise of other ethical issues such as the financially focused healthcare. Some for-profit hospitals tend to prioritize money over the provision of efficient and reliable patient care. In such cases, it becomes hard for patients to be served as required when they do not have the stated financial requirements (Alfandre et al., 2016). Additionally, the failure to attend to uninsured patients can be related to a higher focus on economic gains than on the provision of reliable healthcare services. The employment of insufficient nursing staff members to reduce wages is also common across financially focused hospitals, which affects the ability to deliver high-quality care. Similarly, inadequate staff members risk patient and physician safety.
References
Alfandre, D., Clever, S., Farber, N. J., Hughes, M. T., Redstone, P., & Lehmann, L. S. (2016). Caring for ‘Very Important Patients’—Ethical Dilemmas and Suggestions for Practical Management. The American journal of medicine, 129(2), 143-147.
Sheffield, V., & Smith, L. B. (2016). Requests for VIP Treatment in Pathology: Implications for Social Justice and Systems-Based Practice. AMA journal of ethics, 18(8), 786.