Ethics and Quality: Foundational Pillars for Anesthesia Practice

Anesthesiologists and CRNAs must prioritize patient well-being while administering anesthesia to minimize risks and pain. A strict code of ethics is key to ensuring patient safety, autonomy and informed consent. Here, we’ll explore why ethics and high-quality care are essential to providing compassionate, equitable, competent anesthesia care.

The Role of Ethics in Anesthesia

Ethics in anesthesia are guided by four grounding principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. Autonomy allows patients to make informed decisions about their care. Beneficence involves acting in the patient’s best interest and optimizing outcomes, while non-maleficence requires that anesthesiologists and CRNAs carefully assess risks to avoid patient harm. Finally, justice requires that each patient receive fair and equitable treatment, regardless of their background.

Quality Care in Anesthesia

Quality care in anesthesia requires consideration of several components of care, including:

  • Patient safety: Following evidence-based best practices, meticulously monitoring patients during and after anesthesia and immediately addressing complications that arise are all critical facets of patient safety.
  • Effective pain management: Anesthesia should be used to diminish pain and discomfort as safely as possible before, during and after a surgical procedure.
  • Informed consent: Patients must be informed about the risks of their anesthesia plan and allowed to make informed decisions regarding their care. 
  • Individualized care: Each patient’s anesthesia plan must be tailored to their individual needs, considering medical conditions, allergies and personal preferences.
  • Efficient communication: The anesthesiology team must communicate effectively and efficiently with the rest of the surgical team, the patient and their family throughout the perioperative process. 
  • Postoperative monitoring: It’s essential that anesthesia professionals carefully monitor patients post-procedure for adverse effects or complications so that interventions can be applied as soon as possible. 

Integrating Ethics and Quality into Clinical Practice

Incorporating ethical practices into anesthesia requires education, as many situations in and out of the operating room require anesthesia professionals to make tough decisions. 

Some situations that require anesthesiologists to call on their ethics and patient care quality training on the job include: 

  • Emergency situations: Anesthesiologists and CRNAs may need to make rapid decisions with limited information, requiring the ability to utilize their education, experience and knowledge about the current situation to make the best choices for their patients. 
  • End-of-life care: In and out of the operating room, anesthesiologists and CRNAs must respect a patient’s wishes for end-of-life care, even when the professional in question would choose a different path.
  • Informed consent: Helping patients understand the risks, benefits and alternatives to anesthesia in an emergency or a situation in which they have a limited ability to make decisions.

Studies show that anesthesiologists require a different level of consideration than some other medical professionals. Anesthesiologists and CRNAs work nearly exclusively with patients who are about to enter or have entered an altered state of consciousness. 

Some ethical dilemmas anesthesiologists face include: 

  • When time is of the essence, should an anesthesiologist ever push back against a surgeon’s requests?
  • Should opioids be prescribed to patients for post-surgical pain management despite a high risk of addiction?

At CCI Anesthesia, it’s important for us to uphold the highest moral standards in and out of the operating room. When asked about her favorite part about working with CCI Anesthesia, CCI Chief CRNA Andrea Bouchard said, “The company’s morals, quality and foundational beliefs.” 

Fostering an Ethical, Quality-Driven Culture in Anesthesia Teams

Following a code of ethics is essential for all providers offering high-quality patient care. Reading about current ethical case studies and staying current on ethical best practices in the anesthesia community is key to ensuring the best possible patient outcomes. 

At CCI Anesthesia, we provide our team members with professional development and education opportunities that allow them to improve patient outcomes while furthering their careers. If you’re ready to take the next step in your career, we want to talk to you. Reach out to us today to learn more and discuss joining our team