Case Management: Ethics

Course overview

Case managers face challenging ethical decisions every day. Whether it is finding a way to provide a patient with an expensive, lifesaving medication, a mask mandate to prevent the spread of a deadly virus, or management of a higher-than-average caseload, ethics are the cornerstone of practice. Biomedical ethics are in place to guide the decision-making process through these challenging experiences (Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, 2021). Within case management, each healthcare discipline has a professional organization with a code of ethics specific to that discipline. The code of ethics defines the relationship between the discipline and the members of society that are served by that discipline. Ethical principles set the expectation that the public will be treated fairly, justly, and with respect (CMSA, 2022)