Assignment

You have been appointed Director of Public Relations and Ethics at County Hospital. The hospital is facing several urgent situations regarding the following issues. Your Stand-Alone Project responses should be both grammatically and mechanically correct and formatted in the same fashion as the project itself. If there is a Part A, your response should identify a Part A, etc. In addition, you must appropriately cite all resources used in your response and document them in a bibliography using APA style. (A 10-page, double-spaced, response is required.)

1. Abortion

2. Germline Experimentation

3. Randomized Clinical Research

4. Rationing Health Care

5. Organ Transplants

Part A

White Papers: You are charged with preparing white papers on these topics. White papers present various positions, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each; they do not give or defend the author's position. Write a one-page paper on each of the topics listed above. Include a bibliography formatted in APA style. (5 pages)

Part B

Questions and Rationales: You must also instruct the hospital's Ethics Committee to discuss these issues in depth and revise the hospital's ethics handbook. As part of your work with the Ethics Committee, you must draft three questions that will guide Ethics Committee deliberations for each of the five topics (15 questions total). For each question provide the rationale for the question. (2 pages)

Part C

Press Release Flyers: In addition to the white papers, you are charged with preparing 1/2-page summaries of your own position on each of these topics in the form of a flyer that clearly states hospital policy and the rationale behind it. (In real life, this flyer would state the position and rationale of your ethics committee). Each summary should contain less than 200 words and should cover the main ethical issues that patients and their families might have. (3 pages)

A suggested outline for these summaries is as follows.

1. State the position clearly in one paragraph.

2. Allot one paragraph for each ethical position, giving reasons for and against each of them.

3. Restate your position and give persuasive arguments for it.

4. Indicate that hospital personnel are available to discuss ethical issues with family members.