An analysis of ethics compliance challenges within strained healthcare systems: the case of South Africa
Date
2023-03
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Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores ethics compliance challenges within strained healthcare systems in South Africa. Its chief aim is to examine the link between ethics compliance issues and strained healthcare systems in South Africa, and how these challenges can be dealt with. In order to achieve this aim, the study firstly traces the evolution and current status of healthcare systems in South Africa, from the apartheid years to the current time. Today the healthcare system in South Africa comprises of a two-levelled system consisting of the private and public sectors. The study documents how healthcare resources are allocated between the private and public health sector. The private healthcare sector is well funded and has a lot of resources as compared to the public health sector. As a result, strain is experienced within the public healthcare system as 81.2% of the population makes use of this system. The study goes on to investigate how ethical and compliance challenges facing the strained healthcare sector can be tackled. These ethical challenges include instances of malpractice, and a leadership or governance crisis, which is manifested through corruption in the form of the looting of public funds and health resources, and irregular awarding of managerial positions within the public healthcare sector. These ethical compliance issues continue to create significant delays in achieving the improvement of healthcare delivery, and it is therefore important to seek solutions to these problems. This thesis argues that there is an urgent need for an ethics of responsibility and ethics training within the health sector. The main conclusion of the study is that the integration of an ethics of responsibility into the South African healthcare system may be a useful supplement to existing ethical theories such as utilitarian or deontological moral frameworks, and hence argues for the need for an integrative ethics discourse.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Geen opsomming beskikbaar.
Description
Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2023.