Ethical decision-making challenges in clinical practice

Today's health care environment requires professionals to pay increasing attention to efficiencies and functional outcomes. Today's patients are hospitalized for short stays, and those needing rehabilitation often have multiple diagnoses and goals. Cost effective strategies support fast paced occupational therapy programs and professionals who are adept multi-task specialists and problem solvers. Practitioners have multiple resources and strategies for clinical reasoning and decision-making; however, ethical decision-making requires use of additional resources and strategies. This paper provides strategies to examine everyday ethical problems and dilemmas, including application of The American Occupational Therapy's Code of Ethics, to support ethical decision-making in practice settings (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2000a).