Good Care at VA?

¶ … political scrutiny and media coverage, the Veterans Administration (VA) is facing a lot of questions about its ethics, its practices and its performance when it comes to the care of the patients they are charged with healing (Hicks, 2014). Whether it be mental health, physical maladies or procedural issues, the common refrain is that the veterans of the United States are not receiving medical care that is complete, timely or done/managed in a competent way. Further, many say that this is not remotely a new issue or problem (Pearson, 2014).

This research study will deign to look at the overall ethical issues in play in the VA right now as they pertain to patient care, healthcare management and research. Research Question This study will assess whether the VA is being managed and operated in an ethical fashion. For those issues that are found, there will be a discussion and recommendations on how to improve patient outcomes and the overall ethical climate of the VA.

With that in mind, the following hypotheses are being put forth: 1) While not completely incompetent, the level and quality of care for veterans going to VA clinics is lacking in overall quality 2) The management of the VA is not behaving in an ethical fashion as they are allowing VA patients to needlessly wait and suffer entirely too often 3) While the VA is certainly working with a finite amount of dollars and resources, they are certainly not being managed and controlled from an ethics standpoint the way that they could or should be Methodology Variables The variables that will be assessed will include patient location, patient need, turnaround time for patients to get the service they request or require, and other similar factors.

Research Design The design of this research will be a blend between quantitative and qualitative research. The hard facts and numbers that stem from quantitative data will be exceedingly useful but there will surely be some qualitative data from both clinicians, management and patients that will be useful in painting the entire ethics and performance picture. A blended approach to research data allows a compare and contrast between the two to make sure everything lines up.

Data alone does not tell the whole story and some qualitative accounts can be biased or incomplete. Decision Rule The decision rule that shall be used for this study is fairly simple. A fair and complete collection of evidence about the management and ethics climate of the VA will be done. If the evidence shows the VA is being mismanaged from an administration and ethical standpoint, then the hypotheses that say they are doing poorly will be confirmed.

However, if the opposite is true, then they hypotheses will be mostly or entirely proven wrong. Conclusion While the expected outcome of this research study is not expected to be positive, the.