Die etiek van geriatriese versorging: is daar genoeg riglyne beskikbaar vir die publieke gesondheid?

Abstract

The ethics for geriatric care: Are there enough guidelines available in public healthcare?

This article raises the question if sufficient guidelines are available for geriatric care in the public health system. This question is informed by the growing elderly community and hence the geriatric community worldwide but also in South Africa. The importance of such guidelines is supported by, amongst other, reports from the World Health Organization. This article responds to this question and contributes to the importance of the matter to present ethical guidelines that can be used in public healthcare for the geriatric community.

A mixed methods approach was followed. A literature review identified guidelines for geriatric care. These guidelines are supplemented by the analysis and discussion deriving from the quantitative collection of data.

The definition of ethics departs from Beauchamp and Childress’s four principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. Gillon’s reference to scope was added to include the role of Christian ethics in these guidelines.

A literature review identified five relevant observations that can be used as ethical guidelines in public healthcare for geriatric people. The relevance thereof was confirmed by the results from a Likert scale questionnaire, Principal Component Analysis, and a Rotated Component Matrix.

These observations resulted in ethical guidelines that can be used in public healthcare. Another six guidelines were formulated from a Christian ethic perspective. The latter guidelines are not an extension of the guidelines but rather a way in which these guidelines can be applied from a Christian ethics perspective.