In this Article
By: Kendall Upton
Professional insights: Matthew Anderson
If you decide to earn a healthcare administration degree, chances are you’ll end up taking an ethics course at some point during the program. And even if your program doesn’t have an entire class set aside to discuss ethical considerations in healthcare, it’s a topic that’s bound to emerge throughout other areas of learning.
Ethics classes can at times be quite different from the rest of your courseload, inciting discussions that are more philosophical in nature than your average class. This doesn’t make them any less important—in fact, healthcare administration students would be wise to take their ethics course to heart as the theoretical ideas discussed can have numerous applications throughout your career.
What healthcare administration ethics courses are all about
Many undergraduate and graduate health administration programs include an ethics course as part of their required curriculum. These courses are designed to teach future healthcare administrators about the ethical and legal standards of their profession and how to navigate complex ethical and legal dilemmas when they inevitably arise.
“What courses like mine try to do is give healthcare administrators the ability to recognize when they’re dealing with an issue that has significant legal ramifications, and be able to understand when they’re dealing with an issue where people may have different ethical views and values,” said Matthew Anderson, a senior lecturer in the Health Policy & Management Division of the University of Minnesota’s (UM) School of Public Health.
Anderson teaches a health law and ethics course that takes place during the final semester of UM’s Master of Health Administration (MHA) program. Though Anderson’s class combines the topics of healthcare laws and ethics into one course, some programs split these topics into two separate courses.
Still, most ethics courses in healthcare administration programs touch on the following:
“You have to be familiar with the different sources of law, where to look for laws and the general legal principles around healthcare issues, which are largely about clinician-patient relationships, privacy, confidentiality, informed consent, patient-centered decision making, malpractice, those kinds of things,” Anderson said. “And then we also cover what I call market laws—antitrust, anti-kickback, the False Claims Act with respect to healthcare organizations, etc.”
In these classes, students aren’t always tackling simple right versus wrong healthcare scenarios—ethical and moral quandaries can go deeper than that.
We talk about issues where there is no clear-cut right answer, situations where you have multiple bad things that can happen.
“We talk about issues where there is no clear-cut right answer, situations where you have multiple bad things that can happen. How do you choose which of those bad things to let happen and which ones you’re going to prevent? And of course the complexities, difficulties and emotions that are then involved in healthcare situations.”
The relationship between clinicians and administrators
Another major facet of his course, Anderson said, is teaching healthcare administrators to understand the biomedical ethical framework that clinicians use.
He is referring to the four principles of medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice. Clinicians learn and practice these four tenets throughout their education, but they can at times be in conflict with the ethical and moral obligations of administrators.
“What we try to do is be able to get healthcare administrators to understand where clinicians are coming from with their approach to ethical issues. This is the doctrine, the framework that they approach those issues with, and we try to get healthcare administrators to understand that healthcare administrators have different ethical obligations. They’re similar, but they’re different in the sense that the clinician is focused exclusively on what is in the best interest of this patient. The healthcare administrator has to be focused on what is in the best interest of this organization or this community, and stewardship of resources becomes a big issue for healthcare administrators.”
Undergraduate vs. graduate level courses
A healthcare ethics course can be quite different depending on whether it’s taught at the undergraduate or graduate level. Though the topics covered in these courses may be similar, it’s their delivery that likely varies the most.
Anderson identified two primary differences between undergraduate and graduate level ethics courses:
Why ethics courses matter
Learning about healthcare ethics may seem obvious for clinicians who are tasked with delivering care to patients, so why do healthcare administrators need to learn about ethics as well?
“At the basic level, whether you’re working in a provider organization, a payer organization, medical device manufacturer, pharmaceutical company, whatever—at the end of the day, the decisions that healthcare administrators make affect individuals and families. Whether they get care or don’t get care, have access to medicine or have to pay for it, whatever it may be,” Anderson said.
It’s imperative, therefore, that administrators understand how their daily decisions trickle down to patients and how to make the most beneficial choices.
“There are tradeoffs [in healthcare] and healthcare administrators, for good or bad, are in the position of making system-level decisions about those tradeoffs,” Anderson said. “And those tradeoffs are not without ethical ramifications, so we need healthcare administrators to be able to understand these ethical tensions, to be able to have hard conversations—with their colleagues, clinicians, patients and families, health insurance companies, whoever they talk to about those issues—in a sophisticated way that identifies differences in values, and that has elements of cultural competency and humility, in order to be able to come up with decisions that are actually fair and in the best interest of those patients and families that are receiving care.”
Tips for success in a healthcare ethics classes
Besides applying yourself as you would in any other class, you may need a slightly different approach if you want to make the most of your healthcare ethics course. For starters, it’s especially important to pariticipate in class discussions, ask quesions and be open to having some uncomfortable conversations since you can expect to tackle a lot of theoretical scenarios as a group.
“I think one of the most important things is having an awareness of your own personal values, but being willing to say that for the purposes of this course, I am going to consider other values or different views and try to understand why people hold a different view than I hold with respect to this issue,” Anderson said. You don’t have to ignore your values outright, but Anderson said you must be open to trying to understand how other people could approach a situation and come to a different outcome or decision based on different values.
It’s certainly easier said than done at times, but it’s an important skill that’s not only essential to your success in the course but your career as an administrator as well.
“I would argue that it is a leadership practice that is not unique to ethics or to law. It is a trait of leadership, but it is a trait that is often difficult in technical issues because when we are faced with an ethical dilemma, we often want to retreat into what we think is right or wrong and stop listening.”
Parting words
Healthcare administrators must make countless decisions throughout their career that have ethical consequences. If they want to be successful, it’s important that they understand these ethical and moral tensions at a deeper level so that they can find the best possible outcome. That’s why many healthcare administration programs, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, have an ethics course to discuss the legal and ethical underpinnings to their roles. Students must be open-minded and willing to look at scenarios from multiple perspectives if they truly want to get the most out of their course.
Whether you’re an established healthcare administrator hoping to advance your career or someone at the beginning of their educational journey, hit our Find Schools button to learn more about healthcare administration programs today.
