Health Care Communication Ethics- Chapter 11

Within this chapter and under health care communication ethics there were two things that stood out to me. First, the book states that "optimism urges us to assume that all gallant efforts toward the reclaiming of health will secure success. However, the human condition does not support such unfounded optimism." (191) It goes on to say that if we are to understand health care communication ethics we need to broaden our perspective and understanding of what health is and that it goes beyond optimism to a place of hope. That it is there to protect and promote the good of hope in all times and forms of health, whether it be good health, regular health issues, irregular health issues, or tragic health issues. I was intrigued by the differentiation between optimism and hope. "Optimism falls prey to a consumer mentality of demand for life to conform to one's wishes; hope is grounded in the same desire but, additionally, possesses a gritty sense of work and conviction situated within the realization that not all hopes actualize themselves." (192) There is a clear distinction between optimism and hope in health care communication ethics and is something that I never thought of. Optimism is something that fades while hope continues through it all. This alines with the second thing that stood out to me and is what the book calls "the final freedom; the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change". (194) I think that stand can be said to possess optimism and/or hope. It is the place that we plant our feet and deal with all the different types of health that we experience and in the end death. Health care communication ethics protects and promotes the way that we deal with being human and within that the emotions that we feel that are involved with health. This is definitely not the way that I thought about health care communication ethics, I always thought about it as just the ethics of how patients were treated and the communication practices of health care professionals. After reading this chapter I see that it is much more than that. I feel that an example of these things could be taken from when my grandmother passed away. Optimism was with us when she went to the doctor, thinking that it would be something minor, that faded when she was diagnosed with lung cancer and only given a short amount of time. At this point she declared her "final freedom", she took a stand and made choices based on a fate that she could no longer change. She choose to go home and do hospice and be with her family, somewhere she loved and was comfortable, instead of in a hospital with drugs and fighting to the end. Our optimism for a good diagnosis changed with her decision, to a hope that she wouldn't suffer and would go quietly the way that she wanted. We were no longer expecting something of her health situation but hoping for a different response, knowing that what was to come would come and that "not all hopes actualize themselves". (194) Do you think that health care communication ethics is more about the patients and people living in the health situation than it is the professionals after reading points from the chapter?