Professional boards in health care: standards, safety, and public protection

Healthcare professionals offer their services to the community whilst taking care to fully respect people's dignity. Doctors need to earn public confidence by dedicating their skill all equally, and to the best of their ability. A number of professional organizations supporting doctors in ensuring public safety exist, two of which are the ANA (American Nurses Association) and the AMA (American Medical Association). In this paper, the two aforementioned organizations' standards and functions will be analyzed.

A clear identification of the professional boards

The ANA represents its 3.6-million-strong registered nurse (RN) workforce's interests. Its goal is attempting to advance the profession of nursing through the promotion of superior practice standards (American Nurses Association, 2016). Meanwhile, the AMA represents a professional organization chiefly engaged in publishing studies geared at advancing public health, in addition to advocating for licensed doctors' interests. It participates in the areas of Obamacare implementation, healthcare IT, Medicare/Medicaid, improvements in care delivery quality and patient safety, etc. Resident doctors, medical students, and all doctors are entitled to apply for AMA membership (Rouse, 2015).

A summary of the functions of each of these boards, their primary focus, and what they do

ANA

The ANA represents the nation's lone full-service agency that speaks for the whole RN labor force in America. In all places, including the Congress, boardrooms, federal-level organizations, healthcare centers (including hospitals), etc., this group represents nurses' strongest voice. It supports a secure, ethical, and fair workplace setting, boosting nursing staff members' wellness and health, and supporting its members and the general society in healthcare matters concerning them. Lastly, it assumes a vanguard position in improving healthcare quality for all citizens of the nation (American Nurses Association, 2016)

The organization plays a central role in healthcare reform-related policy initiatives. Priority issues for the organization include: a streamlined health infrastructure and process capable of effectively delivering primary care within community settings; facilitating the transformation of and improvements to the overall healthcare atmosphere; a bigger RN and APRN (advanced practice RN) role in primary and basic healthcare delivery; and securing federal grants for nursing education/training (American Nurses Association, 2016).

AMA

Among the responsibilities of the AMA is: petitioning numerous governmental health-division organizations such as the National health IT Coordinator and the DHHS (Department of Health and Human Services) with regard to health IT matters. From time to time, the organization collaborates with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and other entities in requesting reforms or improvements to current health policies affecting patients and the routine work of the nation's healthcare workforce (Rouse, 2015).

The AMA defines its mission as: informing healthcare professionals of advances in the health sector, ensuring better ailment prevention and effectively delivering healthcare for maintaining a healthier nation (Rouse, 2015). Additionally, it disseminates research and practical data to doctors as well as the community and conducts a wide array of healthcare educational programs through presentations, speeches, and mass media vehicles. The agency ensures its members remain informed of key relevant regulations and laws, and acts as a representative for doctors before the two Congressional houses and government organizations, taking care to advocate its personal standpoint when it does so. Lastly, the AMA aids in establishing standards for internship programs and medical colleges, and attempts at uncovering and alerting community members about quacks and any fake remedies in the market (American medical association/ American organization, 2016).

Discuss the key professional standards established by the identified boards. How are the professional standards set by each of these boards similar and different? What happens if the standards are in conflict with one another?

ANA

Nursing professionals place their trust in the ANA owing to the organization's commitment to values, rules, and standards. Organizational employees strive hard towards elevating the profession of nursing by conforming to RNs' priorities and values across America. This way, it helps offer direction to the country's nursing workforce, shapes policy, and executes a framework for objective evaluation of nursing excellence. Its standards include:

A Nursing Ethical Code

This decisive guidebook illustrates how nurses are to perform their daily duties, stick to ethical requirements, and deliver quality care.

ANA's Nursing Standards

Practice standards and scope define nursing science and art, besides detailing aspects linked to specialty nursing.

ANA's Position Statements

Whenever debates surface within the healthcare sector, the organization offers its position statement -- a clarification, rationalization, or recommended approach.

ANA's Nursing Practice Principles

The organization provides members principles and practical data in all areas like compensation package, recruitment, documentation, social media, work delegation, etc. (American Nurses Association, 2016).

AMA

This organization's standards include the following 3 aspects: Medical Ethical Values, the CEJA's (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs) Ethical Views, and the CEJA's Reports. The standards aim at broadly dealing with components of ethical conduct at ensuring only occasional changes to the standards. While these are not national laws, they outline the prerequisites of moral conduct for doctors. The principles aim at assisting doctors, individually as well as jointly, with maintenance of superior ethical/moral conduct. These standards will help doctors ascertain the correctness of their conduct when dealing with clients, coworkers, the public, and associated professions' members (Riddick, 2003).

Furthermore, doctors ought to constantly endeavor to hone their skills and remain up-to-date on the latest medical knowledge, and ensure patients as well as their coworkers benefit from their professional accomplishments. Doctors ought to practice scientifically-established treatment techniques and refrain from voluntarily associating, at work, with individuals who disobey these values. Lastly, healthcare professionals ought to protect themselves and society from morally-lacking or professionally-incompetent doctors. They ought to follow every relevant law, maintain their profession's dignity and integrity, and accept the disciplines enforced by the profession. They must also unhesitatingly expose any illicit or unscrupulous behavior of coworkers (Riddick, 2003).

Solving Areas of Conflict

According to the ANA's ethical code for the nursing profession, nurses need to prioritize preservation and protection of patients' informed decision rights. They are duty-bound to offer correct, full, and comprehensible facts to patients, thereby enabling patients to ascertain the desired treatment technique. Nursing professionals' chief duty is to patients in their charge, and the organization rebuffs all ideas of NPs placing employer goals above those of delivering quality care (ANA Defends the High Standard of Care Advanced Practice Nurses Provide in Retail-Based Clinics, 2007).

According to the AMA, patients' self-decision rights may only be properly realized when they acquire sufficient, clear information for making intelligent choices. Doctors are ethically responsible to aid patients with choosing a therapeutic option in line with ethical medical practice. According to the ANA, if a nursing staff member finds a given therapy, medication, practice or action ethically objectionable, he/she can well refuse to implement it on ethical grounds. Nurses are duty-bound to guarantee patient safety, take care not to abandon patients, and withdraw from caring for them only if they are assured of the availability of alternative care sources (Sonfield, 2005).

A summary and evaluation of the methods used by each of the identified boards for protecting the public. How and how well does each of these groups assure that professional standards are carried out and that the safety of the public is adequately protected?

AMA

Scientific committees and councils like the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals, The Chemical Laboratory, the Bureau of Health Education, the Council on Drugs and the AMA Bureau of Investigation guide most AMA tasks, by gathering and analyzing the data offered by latest relevant treatments and discoveries (American medical association| American organization, 2016).

Furthermore, the AMA publishes numerous peer-reviewed journals, of which the most notable is its AMA Journal, the world's most widely-disseminated medical journal whose first edition was published in the year 1883. This journal covers articles on health policy, medicine, and healthcare (Rouse, 2015).

Additionally, the AMA observes the environment of the industry and communicates with it for discovering novel ways to draw its skill into the discussion, engages stakeholders in implementing key guidelines, formulates and disseminates best practices, and trains physicians on them. It helps digital medicine/health solutions ensure efficient care and facilitates the forging of sound doctor-patient bonds (American Medical Association, 2016).

The AMA's Advocacy Resource Center helps mold and inform pro-doctor and -- patient state legislation, policies, and rules. By advocating for patient health-status improvement policies, maintaining patient-physician bonds, and fostering sustainable medical practices, in collaboration with federal and state health specialty societies, it has helped alter, repeal, and formulate innumerable proposed state legislations and rules (American Medical Association, 2016).

ANA

Committed to guaranteeing the availability of sufficient well-educated and -trained nurses, the ANA fulfills both its members' and patients' needs. It fosters superior practice standards, promotes nursing staff's overall and economic wellbeing, presents an accurate and positive view of the profession, and lobbies with the government and regulatory bodies on healthcare matters impacting nursing professionals and the society, thus advancing the profession of nursing (American Nurses Association, 2016).

Through its legislative and political initiative, the ANA has adopted firm stands on various issues like patient rights, Medicare reform, proper staffing, healthcare provider-specific whistleblower protections, a need for safe needle devices, adequate healthcare access, and appropriate reimbursement for services provided. The lobbying attempts of the ANA and affiliated state-level agencies promote federal- as well as state- level health reforms (American Nurses Association, 2016).

References

American Medical Association. (2016). Innovation to Improve Health Care. Retrieved November 4, 2016, from https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-initiatives

American Medical Association. (2016). What we do. Retrieved November 4, 2016, from https://www.ama-assn.org/about/what-we-do

American medical association (AMA) - American organization (2016). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/American-Medical-Association

American Nurses Association. (2016). About ANA. Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://www.nursingworld.org/Functionalmenucategories/Aboutana

American Nurses Association. (2016). Statement of purpose. Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://www.nursingworld.org/Functionalmenucategories/Aboutana/ANAsStatementofPurpose.html

American Nurses Association. (2016). Professional standards. Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://www.nursingworld.org/nursingstandards

ANA defends the high standard of care advanced practice nurses provide in retail-based clinics. (2007). Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://www.nurses.com/doc/ana-defends-the-high-standard-of-care-advance-0001

Riddick Jr., F. A. (2003). The code of medical ethics of the American Medical Association. The Ochsner Journal, 5(2), 6-10.

Rouse, M. (2015, March). What is American medical association (AMA). Retrieved November 4, 2016, from http://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/definition/American-Medical-Association-AMA

Sonfield, A. (2005). Rights vs. Responsibilities: Professional standards and provider refusals. The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy, 8(3), 7-9.