Roles of a healthcare administrator

As a health care administrator, you will be accountable to many people, including employees, patients and their families, the executive board, and the agencies that monitor the organization’s behavior. There may be times when your obligations conflict with each other. What is the best way to approach these conflicts? How can you be sure that you are serving the needs of both patients and the organizations for which you work, while exhibiting professionalism and moral courage?

For this Assignment, you will reflect on your responsibilities as a health care administrator and examine the importance of moral courage in performing well in that role.

To prepare for this Assignment, take the ACHE Ethics Self-Assessment (refer to your Learning Resources). Review your scores. Consider what these results tell you about your ability to effectively work with ethical and professional challenges in your role as a health care administrator. Think about what these results say about your ability to exhibit moral courage in the face of these challenges.

The Assignment

Write a 2-page Op-Ed piece to be published in a newspaper about what you think moral courage means in your role as a health care administrator. (Review the Learning Resources this week that provide information about how to write an effective Op-Ed piece.)

Include the following in your Op-Ed:

• The importance of an administrator to exhibit moral courage
• The effects on others in an organization if an administrator models ethical and legal behavior or, on the contrary, illegal or unethical behavior

General Guidance on Assignment Length: Your Assignment should be 2 pages in length. Refer to the Week 2 Assignment Rubric for grading elements and criteria. Your Instructor will use the rubric to assess your work.

• Macklin, R. (2015). Can one do good medical ethics without principles? Journal of Medical Ethics, 41(1), 75–78.
  Can One Do Good Medical Ethics Without Principles? by Macklin, R., in Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 41/Issue 1. Copyright 2015 by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. Reprinted by permission of BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. via the Copyright Clearance Center.
• Oregon State University: Extension and Experiment Station Communications. (n.d.). Write a killer op-ed piece. Retrieved from http://extension.oregonstate.edu/eesc/how-to/write-killer-op-ed-piece
  Writing a Killer Op-ed Piece by Extension and Experiment Station Communications. Copyright N.D. by Oregon State University Press. Reprinted by permission of Oregon State University Press via the Copyright Clearance Center.
• American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). (n.d.). Ethics self-assessment. Retrieved from http://www.ache.org/newclub/CAREER/ethself.cfm
• ACHE. (2005). Ethics toolkit. Retrieved from http://www.ache.org/ABT_ACHE/EthicsToolkit/ethicsTOC.cfm
• ACHE. (2011). ACHE code of ethics. Retrieved from http://www.ache.org/abt_ache/code.cfm
• ACHE. (1992/2011). Creating an ethical culture within the healthcare organization. Retrieved from http://www.ache.org/policy/environ.cfm
• American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ThePracticeofProfessionalNursing/EthicsStandards/CodeofEthics.aspx
• Duke University: Office of News and Communications. (2013). How to write an op-ed article. Retrieved from http://newsoffice.duke.edu/duke_resources/oped
• Ethics Research Center. (2009). Plus: The decision making process. Retrieved from http://www.ethics.org/resource/plus-decision-making-process

  Note: This web page identifies the six steps a health care executive must follow when making ethical decisions. Although this page is older, the information is seminal and relevant to this course.

• Harvard Kennedy School: Communications Program. (2012). How to write an op-ed or column.Retrieved from http://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HO_NEW_HOW-TO-WRITE-AN-OPED-OR-COLUMN.pdf