Johnson’s Case Study Review: the Terminal Patient

INTRODUCTION

“Determining what to tell patients with life-threatening illness is one of the most difficult challenges facing physicians. (Johnson, 2009, p.212)” There are a few decision-making formats and they seem to be in good orders. However in reality, time will usually be too short for one to follow. In this case, the Terminal Patient, doctors are having difficulty telling a terminal patient that he or she is not going to survive. In other words, the doctors have to announce the death penalty to a person. If you are the doctor, and the patient asks if he is going to make it, what would you answer to him and how would you tell his family?

SUMMARY

Telling a patient that he or she is dying is a moral action which could be the end product of four psychological subprocesses. Moral sensitivity helps people to identify a moral problem in the first place. Then one “makes moral judgments about what is the right or wrong thing to do in this situation (Johnson, 2009, p.202)”. “After concluding what course of action is best, decision makers must be motivated to follow through on their choices. (Johnson, 2009, p.205)” Finally, it needs moral character for one to make an actual moral action.

Johnson (2009) then introduces four ethical decision-making formats for people to use as guidelines when making a decision. Kidder’s “ethical checkpoints” provides nine steps. Nash’s “twelve questions” offers twelve questions for people to “identify the responsibilities involved moral choice (Johnson, 2009, p.212)”. “The sad formula” emphasizes the elements of critical thinking into moral reasoning. The case study method, without a step-by-step process, is different from other three. And this method “is widely used for making medical diagnoses (Johnson, 2009, p.220)”. However, all formats or methods are having advantages as well as disadvantages. In other words, there is no perfect one method for one to follow when making a moral decision.

CRITIQUE

I believe one of the hardest...