The healthcare field exposes healthcare workers to a far greater danger of discrimination against patients than many other industries.
Having and following good ethics is essential when you are faced with allocating scare resources to the person most in need, while there is a pool of potential candidates.
This is about equity versus equality. Equality would share resources equally between all patients.
However, when items are scarce, choices have to be made, such as who should receive an organ out of all patients on a transplant list. Let us examine the different types of discrimination in the healthcare field.
Direct Discrimination
Direct discrimination is what we usually understand from the term discrimination. The rights of all people are protected by federal law from this type of discrimination.
It is against the law to discriminate against someone based on religion, race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, age, civil marriage, gender reassignment, and pregnancy.
Indirect Discrimination
Policies can result in indirect discrimination. For example, when people of certain religious beliefs are fasting, it is not right to arrange lunches for that time, thus excluding them, without providing an alternative.
People are entitled to take religious holidays that accord with their beliefs, although there are some conditions that apply, such as needing to have at least 15 employees on call.
Associative Discrimination
Associative discrimination makes use of direct discrimination.
However, it is aimed at someone who has a relationship with a person who possesses a characteristic that is generally discriminated against. So, the discrimination is with the other person.
For example, you cannot mock someone because they care for disabled adults. You cannot refuse medical services to a patient because they have a gay child.
Perceptive Discrimination
Perceptive discrimination may result in a person being overlooked for a promotion because you think their child has low intelligence.
Whether or not the child does have this characteristic has no bearing on it still being a form of discrimination.
Another example is bullying a person who you believe to be homosexual, although they might be heterosexual.
Multiple Discrimination
Multiple discrimination is discrimination for more than one protected characteristic. For instance, a foreigner can be discriminated against for being from another country, female, and pregnant.
This may result in inferior care compared to other patients’ treatment and approach, such as how they are communicated with and given choices regarding their health.
Multiple discrimination can include several types of discrimination.
Sexual and other Harassment
A Muslim woman may experience harassment when she wears a scarf to cover her head in accordance with her religious beliefs and observances.
A nurse may be impatient towards elderly patients because they move slowly due to age and health conditions. Sexual advances towards a patient, subordinate, or colleague constitute sexual harassment.
Third Party Harassment
Healthcare workers may experience discrimination aimed at them by someone outside of their organization.
This is third party harassment. As much as employees cannot discriminate against patients and their families, they also need to be protected from third party harassment to work effectively.
Failure to Apply Health Equity
In healthcare, health equality vs equity refers to providing treatment that is fair and equitable.
Equality care deems everyone to be equal. Equity denotes providing scarce resources to those most in need, such as a child living in poverty.
This is an important aspect of how decisions are made regarding the allocation of donor organs to patients. Everybody is responsible for speaking up against discrimination and harassment in the workplace.q