The allocations of healthcare resources are practices that can lead to ethical dilemmas especially where the healthcare resources are very scarce. Most of the healthcare institutions are unable to resolve the resource allocation dilemmas because of the conflict that is created between the healthcare management, staffs, patients and their families. The resources that are scarce in most of the healthcare organization include the transplant organs and machines for treating chronic diseases such as cancer. Nonetheless, most of the healthcare resources become scarce during the occurrence of a disaster or an emergency. Thus, it is important to apply ethical theories while establishing the effective strategies that need to be incorporated to ensure that the ethical dilemmas on resource allocation are well solved.
The ethical principles that need to be considered while performing resource allocation include the issue of informed consent and respect for patient autonomy (Maurer, Mangrum, Carman, Ginsburg, Gold, Sofaer & Siegel, 2017) . Before allocating the resources, proper analysis of how the scarce resources should be distributed among the patients need to be performed. The major focus should be on how the suffering patients will benefit from making the best use of limited healthcare resources. Therefore, the utilitarianism theory helps in maximizing the overall patients’ welfare ( Wagner & Dahnke, 2015) . The fact that some individuals would have poorer health than others would or more serious illnesses than others would, then it would be essential to apply the theory of justice (Kazemi & Törnblom, 2016) . This theory ensures that the scarce resources are used well distributed to ensure that the individuals who have the poorest health conditions or those who have the greatest need of healthcare are attended first to boost their conditions.
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References
Kazemi, A., & Törnblom, K. Y. (2016). Toward a Resource Production Theory of Distributive Justice. In Distributive and Procedural Justice (pp. 55-82). Routledge.
Maurer, M., Mangrum, R., Carman, K. L., Ginsburg, M., Gold, M. R., Sofaer, S., & Siegel, J. (2017). Setting boundaries: public views on limiting patient and physician autonomy in health care decisions. Journal of health politics, policy, and law , 42 (4), 579-605.
Wagner, J. M., & Dahnke, M. D. (2015). Nursing ethics and disaster triage: Applying utilitarian ethical theory. Journal of Emergency Nursing , 41 (4), 300-306.
