According to Monster.com, nurses, pharmacists, and physicians are the top three ethical professions in the United States. In fact, nurses have held the top spot for over 15 years (Lily Martis, 2016).
When I first started travel nursing in 2003, hospital cancellations were few and far between. Yes, they were there, but you had to really mess up to have your contract canceled. Then we started to see more travelers canceling their contracts for petty reasons. Nowadays, it does not take much to have a contract canceled.
Back then, if your contract got canceled, your recruiter went to bat for you and found you another job while the agency took the financial hit. The travel agencies were starting to lose money, big time. Then we began to see the agencies charging for canceled contracts. After all, they just spent thousands of dollars to get credentialing done.
I see more and more healthcare workers who have this “me, me, me” attitude. It’s just plain wrong that healthcare travelers have acted in such unethical ways that everyone is now subject to those fines.
There are seven primary ethical principles that healthcare providers have to face:
(1) Patient rights – Patients have the right to make their own decisions regarding their healthcare. As professional healthcare workers, we must respect these rights. This includes the right to refuse treatment.
(2) Confidentiality of the patients – Even before the HIPPA laws, we have always had patient confidentiality standards. At times, this is very hard to keep, especially on social media. We think that it is okay to post in a private group, but nothing is private on the internet.
(3) Patient safety – As a nurse, we made a vow to “do no harm.” The only problem with our vow to do no harm is that we are human and make mistakes. Unfortunately, some of these mistakes are made by taking shortcuts. We must all try our best not to make serious mistakes.
(4) Ethics of privatization – This is something that you will see in private hospitals versus community hospitals. Are all the patients treated the same in a private hospital, or are you expected to give a particular patient more attention? Private hospital or not, I personally make every effort to treat each patient with the same dignity.
(5) Informed Consent – Just what is informed consent, and how does it involve nursing staff? Shouldn’t the doctor be the one to get the informed consent? The informed consent should ALWAYS be taken by the physician and appropriately documented in the electronic medical record. Sometimes a nurse is responsible for getting a signature on a piece of paper. In this case, nurses should be accountable for ensuring that the patient was indeed the person who signed the consent. Although I do not educate the patient on the procedure, I ALWAYS make sure that the patient understands the procedure. If they don’t understand it, I do not have the patient sign until they completely understand.
(6) Conform to the policies and procedures of the hospital. Sometimes you disagree with how things are done. The golden rule of travel healthcare is, “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” This is tough to do, but it is not our place to change policies and procedures.
(7) Approach each assignment with integrity and do what you say that you will do. As a traveler, we are expected to show up to the assignment and do our job according to our contract and designated obligations.
No, these principles are not always easy to follow. By sticking to these principles, you will soon create a traveler reputation that will precede you. Recruiters talk, and so do hospital staffing coordinators; that is why a traveler needs to act with integrity and ethics. (See our article on integrity here: https://www.wanderly.us/blog/integrity-in-travel-healthcare/.)
Remember: Always pack your ethics for your next assignment!
Guest Author: these are the thoughts an opinions of Kay Epi Slane, expert Travel Nurse.
*REFERENCES*
Lily Martis. (2016). Can you guess which profession people consider to be the most ethical? Retrieved from Monster.com: https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/healthcare-nurses-most-ethical-job-0117.