Approaches to Ethical Dilemmas
Michelle Silvas
BSHS/335
August 11, 2014
Alma Carpio

Protecting a friend In the case study 18, protecting a Friend, it describes Dr. Adam Marshall, a well-known, much respected physician that works at Uptown General Hospital. He has done many things for the community, such as charities and missionary work. He has worked at the hospital for 20 years with a spotless record. He goes at least twice a year with a group of other physicians to Zambia to provide medical care and much needed medical supplies for the Zambian people. HIV is very prevalent in Zambia and most of the people there are infected. While in Zambia, Dr. Marshall decides to go sightseeing and while out he collapses due to dehydration …show more content…

What is a major issue here now, is that he most likely has infected his patient who he was operating on because he is infected and he bled into an open area of the patient he was performing surgery on. Now this patient will have to live with a life threatening virus.

Summary It’s very unfortunate that Dr. Marshall had become infected with HIV while in Zambia trying to give medical attention to those in need over there but, his agreement with Dr. Singh about not telling people back at home about what had happen has definitely had a negative impact. Although he was great at what he did, he should have let the hospital know his situation about becoming HIV positive. He became selfish and thought only about himself when he decided to still operate on patients while knowing he was putting them in grave danger by operating on them. Now the repercussions of him holding this information back and still continuing to work, most likely will end up having him fired because of his accident in the operating room and also possibly serving time in prison because of his decisions he made. Dr. Marshall could have still probably kept his job if he had been honest, they may have had him doing other things but he still would have been able to work with his patients, just in a safer way than putting them at risk of being harmed. There will be times as a professional that we may come upon hard