When people get sick, it is a rather stressful time for them, no matter if the disease is serious and may have consequences or not. Unfortunately, sometimes people around the sick person can aggravate the situation with their attitude. The purpose of this paper is to review the situation that happened to Sarah, one of the Home Health Care Agency workers. Also, the way it was handled by the agency will be analyzed from different points of view.
Sara was feeling sick for a long period of time and, after seeing a doctor, was diagnosed with active tuberculosis. Forced to spend a long time at home being treated, after coming back to work and not being contagious, Sara faced some unexpected difficulties. Her boss and co-workers refused to spend time with her, there were gossips about her disease, and everyone started avoiding her even more after another worker started to display the same symptoms Sara had.
The main problem of this situation is not Sara’s disease but the attitude of her co-workers. The way they treated an already healthy person who had a severe illness shows their ignorance in the spheres of health communication and advocacy and health literacy. According to Lam and Mattson (2018), “social change via health advocacy campaigns is necessary to alleviate health inequity” (p. 175). Also, the fact that someone from the agency’s Human Resources Department told Sara’s co-workers her diagnosis demonstrates people’s lack of empathy and respect for personal boundaries.
Although it is hard to approve the actions of Sara’s co-workers, it is possible to understand them. When people are worried about their own health, they usually forget about respecting someone’s feelings. However, one of the ethical considerations is to respect confidentiality and privacy (Smith, Morrow, & Ross, 2015). Considering all of the information mentioned above, it is possible to say that the situation was handled in the wrong way.
References
Lam, C., & Mattson, M. (2018). The health communication advocacy tool: An approach toward addressing health inequity. Communicating for Social Change, 175–195.
Smith, P., Morrow, R., & Ross, D. (2015). Field trials of health interventions: A toolbox. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.