Applications to clinical practice and the specific implications for practice within California
Practitioners are profoundly challenged to be ethical when a patient is involuntarily hospitalized due to civil commitment. When patients are held against their will, they are also intensely vulnerable to illness and social structure. These situations obligate our profession to provide evidence-based patient care and advocate for better care of people with psychiatric disorders. Civil commitment has obtained punitive legal criticism. The hearing process is criticized for being a “charade” for lacking a specific, meaningful chance for vulnerable individuals to dispute the liberty restriction they face (SAMSHA, 2020).
In California, under the Lanterman-Petris Short Act (LPS), patients admitted under 5150 retain all their rights when hospitalized or receiving services, except for freely leaving the facility where they are admitted (SAMSHA, 2020). Patients have all rights given to a voluntarily admitted patient.
The practitioners define the decision to commit a patient as resolving the pressure between the ethical principle of nonmaleficence and autonomy (Evans & et al., 2020). They are obliged to predict the occurrence of a patient causing harm to themselves or others, consider when to intervene to avoid harm, and protect and warn those who may be harmed by the patient’s behavior. As practitioners, we are guided to respect a patient’s ability to make choices and to neither unduly influence nor coerce a patient we are treating simultaneously. We should also act in ways not to cause harm to patients (SAMSHA, 2020).
Order this paper