Social Responsibility: Health Care In Our Community

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Social Responsibility
Shannon Klein

Main Hospital has proven itself to be a leader in health care in our community. We pride ourselves with providing the best care to all patients to better the health of our patients. We are also very concerned with ethics and our responsibility to our community. As health care providers we take an oath to do no harm but ethics goes beyond just how we care for our patients. We need to ensure that we are not only a leader in health care but also a responsible and ethical leader in our community. Business ethics is how we deal with our patients, our community, our world and our employees within the organization. We need to be concerned with our ethics as it will enhance our business performance,
We use a lot of plastic products and Styrofoam Many of these products should and can be recycled. We should look into the possibility of recycling IV fluid bags and tubing as well as many wrappers and bags the products are kept in. If it is possible to recycle these items, we would be reducing the amount of waste that we are currently putting into the landfills, thus reducing the burden on the community for getting rid of it. We offer coffee and water to our patients and family members. There is a lot of waste generated from the use of the Styrofoam cups that we currently are using. One way to reduce this would be to give every patient a reusable water pitcher that could be used for the length of their stay. By each patient have a reusable pitcher, we would use less Styrofoam We could even use pitchers that could be washed and sanitized by the kitchen staff so that would reduce greatly the amount of garbage that is going to our landfills. We would need to find out if the added energy cost of washing and sanitizing the pitchers and cups would be more beneficial for our community but if it is, it would be a great way to limit the amount of non recyclables we are putting in our community
In addition we need to maintain a sense of spirituality in the work place. One that treats all people with respect regardless of religious beliefs but one that encourages everyone to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated. Four ways we can analyze ethical problems at Main Hospital is through our virtues or what we value, utility, benefits outweigh costs, rights, and justice. First look at what we value, if it goes against our values then it is unethical or wrong. If it doesn 't care for our customers, employees or community then it goes against our values. Second, utility, if it doesn 't benefit the company then it is probably unethical. An example would be an employee using hospital supplies for personal use. This costs the hospital money and serves no benefit for the hospital so we can say this is unethical. Thirdly