Ethics & Professional Standards in Chronic Care Flashcards

A chronic care organization implements a productivity quota that incentivizes care managers to close patient cases more quickly. This policy raises ethical concerns related to:

Answer: Justice and beneficence — financial incentives may conflict with patient-centered care

Productivity-based incentives that reduce care quality represent a conflict between organizational interests and the ethical duties of justice and beneficence.

Which of the following actions would constitute 'scope of practice' violation for a certified chronic care professional who is not a licensed clinician?

Answer: Independently adjusting a patient's prescribed medication dose without clinician authorization

Independently modifying prescribed medications exceeds the scope of practice for non-licensed care professionals and poses significant patient safety risk.

A chronic care manager has a personal belief that conflicts with a patient's treatment choice for managing their chronic pain, including use of medically prescribed cannabis. The professional ethical standard requires the care manager to:

Answer: Provide professional, nonjudgmental support regardless of personal beliefs

Personal beliefs do not override the professional obligation to provide nonjudgmental, patient-centered support for legal, medically authorized treatment choices.

Which framework is most commonly used by ethics committees to analyze difficult chronic care decisions?

Answer: The four-box method (medical indications, patient preferences, quality of life, contextual features)

The four-box method by Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade is a widely used structured framework for clinical ethics consultation and decision analysis.

A care coordinator discovers that a colleague has been falsifying care plan documentation to meet organizational metrics. The most appropriate professional response is to:

Answer: Report the conduct through appropriate internal and/or external channels

Falsifying clinical documentation is a serious ethical and legal violation that must be reported through proper channels to protect patients and professional integrity.

The ethical concept of 'moral distress' in chronic care professionals refers to:

Answer: Knowing the ethically correct action but being unable to act on it due to institutional or other constraints

Moral distress occurs when professionals are constrained from acting on their ethical judgments by organizational, legal, or systemic barriers.

A CCP is asked to co-sign documentation for a care activity they did not personally oversee. This request is ethically problematic because it:

Answer: Compromises integrity and veracity by attesting to something that is not true

Co-signing documentation for activities not personally observed or supervised constitutes a false attestation and violates the ethical principle of veracity.