Vaccination Ethics

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Ethics- Vaccination

Student’s name

Professor’s name

Institution affiliation

Course

Date
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Ethics- Vaccinate or Not? Case

This case involves two parents, Jenna and Smith, of Ana, a five-year-old baby who stands

out to resist vaccination of their baby whom they had decided to raise naturally. However, Dr.

Kerr is encompassed to execute her obligation as a medical practitioner. Still, the parents'

personal beliefs, which she is bound to consider, hinder her from performing the duties. Dr. Kerr

educative section to Jenna and Smith is not satisfactory to them, and they still uphold their

decision not to vaccinate their baby. However, Dr. Kerr must ensure the safety and autonomy of

her patients based on ethical principles. She is stranded on the decision to take and still morally

binding to her profession's requirement and the client's demands.

Therefore, from the case study description, the ethical dilemma lies in the medical

practitioner's hands-on whether to vaccinate the child. Additionally, the victims of the challenge

are Ana and Dr. Kerr, in that Ana's life or well-being is at stake, and the Kerr's responsibility to

make a moral decision is at her hand. Through the ethical decision-making model, a medical

practitioner has the moral awareness to ensure the most rightful decision is achieved regarding

the underlying challenging situation. First, an ethical medical practitioner should stand to ensure

the client's autonomy or independence on the decision made on them. The medical practitioner is

therefore encompassed to respect the choices that parents make on their child, and consequently,

she has no moral authority to decline their decisions. However, she also has a responsibility to

ensure maximum benefit is achieved on their client's regarding the decision they intend to make.

Therefore, Dr. Kerr must establish a decision that optimally seeks to improve Ana's health and

still respecting the parents' autonomy.

Additionally, under the moral awareness concept, the medical practitioner should ensure

the least or no harm occurs on their clients due to their decision. Therefore, Dr. Kerr has to
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provide the decision taken has to avoid risks or minimize risks entirely. Also, Kerr has a

responsibility to promote justice by making a fair decision and ensure equality on the decision to

be made regarding other members of society.

Through moral awareness, the medical practitioner has to make a moral judgment based

on the evaluation's insights. Therefore, from Kerr's cognitive bias and individual differences with

Ana's parents and the organizational culture, she will make a judgment that best suits the

scenario. Therefore, from these evaluations, Dr. Kerr will make a decision or make a decision

that best depicts an ethical behavior by doing the right thing.

Factors Contributing to the Ethical Problem

Ethics guides individuals to act in a manner that is considered to be right and as well

directs them to understand the wrong. Therefore, any decision made is based on several factors

that lead to ethical dilemmas or challenges. Thus, the moral problem presented in this is

contributed by individual and social factors.

The individual factors cause an ethical problem based on an individual's information

regarding a subject, their personal goals, personal view on morals, and personality (Leung & Ho,

2020). Therefore, the primary cause of the ethical problem, in this case, is the individual factors.

The particular values held by Ana's parents contribute to the moral issue in that they hinder the

medical practitioner from making a defined decision regarding the situation. Jenna's and Smith's

argument is based on values that they want to naturally raise their child, contrary to Kerr's point

of view. Smith's conservative personality constitutes the individual character contributing to the

dilemma situation.
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Additionally, ethical decisions can be affected by social factors such as friends, families,

cultural norms, and social media, or the internet. Notably, the internet has played a critical role in

the cause of the underlying ethical problem in the case. Smith's judgment is based on an online

mommy's blog from which it states vaccination has a significant contribution to autism, claims

that Dr. Kerr despises. Therefore, the internet is a leading social factor in this scenario.

Effectiveness of Communication

Communication between medical practitioners and others (medics and patients) should

target promote a balance between two parties and therefore, should focus on disseminating

maximum information to make decisions effectively. The health professional effectively

communicated in the case since she ensured that the client has detailed information regarding an

argument presented. Additionally, the practitioner used verbal communication through an

interactive approach to thoroughly clarifying the necessary information relating to the case's

claims.

The medical practitioner, in this case, communicated expertly in various instances. First,

she gave the parents ample time to explain their understanding of the vaccination process,

indicating effective communication through active listening skills. Additionally, upon listening

to the client's, Dr. Kerr communicated effectively by clarifying through clear and concise

feedback to create rapport. She extensively explained the benefits of vaccination for the children

and the threats for not taking the vaccinations. Additionally, she emphasized on the safety

procedures on vaccination by providing additional reliable medical sources that can be used to

obtain information rather than following misleading blogs.


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In communication, the purpose should be relaying information to the appropriate

audience. Therefore, various communication approaches should be used and avoided in this

scenario. First, informative communication approaches should be used to make ideas, dangers,

and measures familiar to the victims of the situation and secondly, the educative communication

approach should be used to explain the pathological process's strengths and make clarifications.

Additionally, persuasive communication approaches should be used to convince or change

attitudes or behavior that is risky in medical field operations. However, prompting the

communication approach should be avoided since it draws people's attention through

entertainment methods that can be ignored or not take seriously implicating the process.

Effective communication promotes a positive connection between two conflicting ideas

and provides a suitable solution for a problem being studied. On the other hand, ineffective

communication escalates conflicts, frustration, and confusion, leading to low morale in daily

operations.

Effectiveness of the Approaches

In response to the ethical issue, the medical practitioner took an initiative to educate the

less-informed parent and provided evidence by referring them to a productive site where

adequate information regarding the vaccination can be obtained. The medical practitioner

effectively managed the professional responsibilities and priorities to solve the medical issue by

recognizing her duty to respect the parents' autonomy and standing to make a decision that

optimally benefits the child in the case. Additionally, the health professionals' critical lesson, in

this case, is that they have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their clients while considering
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their level of autonomy and stand for justice for the other parties. Therefore, they are bound to

respect the professional, individual, and legal responsibility of the underlying conditions.

Solution for the Ethical Dilemma

From the evaluation of the case, the medical practitioner should vaccinate the kid to

ensure maximum benefit and minimal harm. Using the four critical ethical principles, the

medical practitioner recognizes that vaccinating the kid outweighs the threats placed by her

parents. The beneficence principle states that an ethical decision should seek to promote a

maximum benefit to the patient (Hubbard & Greenblum, 2019). Therefore, any decision made

should be purposely to place the victim in a better position than she is. From the case study, the

doctor postulates that the children are prone to chronic diseases that later would cause even

death, and by vaccinating, there are increased chances for not contracting the diseases.

Therefore, the benefits attained by the patient for vaccinating supersedes autonomy principle.

Additionally, based on the non-maleficence principle, the doctor's decision should do the

least harm (Steyn & Edge, 2019). Therefore, Dr. Kerr targets to solve threats and do no harm,

justifying the decision to vaccinate. Also, considering the justice principle, the medical decision

should depict an element of fairness and uphold existing laws to provide a just resolution to the

parties and promote equality (Steyn & Edge, 2019). The subject in the case is just five years with

no information on future threats of her parents; there, it would be fair for the medical practitioner

to vaccinate her for future mitigation of health challenges rather than considering the parents'

decisions.
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This decision makes the doctor's profession more effective with other disciplines by

focusing on their sole role of mitigating problems, saving lives, and promoting an enabling

environment for future generations. Thus, this solution is likely to foster professional

collaboration by building cohesion, setting team goals, communicating organizational

expectations regarding current and future safety of their clients, and leveraging team

strengthening to attain collaborative decisions.

References

Hubbard, R., & Greenblum, J. (2019). Parental decision making: The best interest principle,

child autonomy, and reasonableness. HEC Forum, 31(3), 233-240.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-019-09373-9

Leung, T. C., & Ho, J. C. (2020). Social responsibility and ethics in health care. Primary Care

Revisited, 225-240. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2521-6_14


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Steyn, E., & Edge, J. (2019). Ethical considerations in global surgery. British Journal of Surgery,

106(2), e17-e19.

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