The underserved populations can be referred to as the members of the minority populations or those people who have had health disparities. The health care professions are often dominated by people from more privileged backgrounds, thus bringing about both ethical and moral issues while trying to provide care to the underserved patients whose decision making customs and values are influenced by their ethnic and cultural backgrounds (Franco, 2010).
One of the issues that are likely to come up is ethical distress whereby the health care provider is aware of the right course of action but cannot actualize it may be due to lack of resources. Another one is the ethical conflict that crops up when a course of action fulfills some moral goods while comprising others. In most cases, underserved patients have low health literacy, less education or significant behavioral health disorders and therefore, healthcare givers may need to assist them in understanding their medical situations. For that reason, there may arise an issue regarding who has the moral authority to make a decision known as ethical quandary (Olney, Stroe & Hughes, 2019)
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Ethnic minorities are among the underserved populations and are considered to practice cultural norms and values that are different from the dominant culture in a particular state. The poor socio-economic position of some of the minority ethnic groups is the primary cause of ethnic health inequalities. The Department of Health has however, worked towards closing the health gap for ethnic minorities by eliminating unlawful discrimination in a bid to ensure that the policies apply even to these populations. Again, communication has been a barrier to health care provision to the ethnic minorities. For that reason, various medical facilities have put in place interpreters to ensure the patient and providers communicate effectively (Medicine, Board on Health Care Services, & Subcommittee on Standardized Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement, 2009).
References
Franco, J. (2010). Addressing the Needs of the Underserved. SciVee . doi:10.4016/16524.01
Medicine, I. O., Board on Health Care Services, & Subcommittee on Standardized Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement. (2009). Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement . Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Olney, C., Stroe, S., & Hughes, A. (2019). Poor, Homeless, and Underserved Populations. Oxford Textbook of Palliative Nursing , 490-502.
