Truth Telling - Essay Example

?Truth Telling Introduction Truth telling is a psychological concept that refers to the elimination of deceit in a conversation. It dictates that people do not withhold information from their partners during an interaction. This implies the avoidance of lying, misrepresentation, and deception during an interaction. Truth telling is a social virtue thus is a prerequisite to the creation of an ideal society. Everyone in a society must therefore learn to tell the truth at all times. However, this is not always the case as different scenarios present different diverse challenges thereby prompting people to reveal their facts sparingly. There are a number of disciplines that do not encourage lying. Such a discipline as medicine and its related subsets require truthful interaction between doctors and patients in order to achieve the effectiveness of both the diagnosis and treatment. Honesty is a relative concept in the health care ethics. For a long time, medical practitioners had assumed that patients told the truth about their conditions but as studies later proved, the effectiveness of a diagnosis relies on the amount of information that both parties in the process give each other thereby prompting the encouragement of truth from both the doctor and the patient. Just as doctors require as much accurate information from their patients in order to make factual diagnosis, patients also need to know their conditions thereby prompting the doctors to tell their patients the truth. Additionally, some professions within the practice of medicine rely entirely on dialogues between patients and doctors. Such therapeutic practices as psychoanalysis thus rely on the truthful interaction between the two in order to develop effective treatment plans. Truth telling in the practice also includes the process of reporting errors. During the practice, doctors are likely just as any other human to make errors. The factuality with which they report such help develops an effective address mechanism thereby preventing or minimizing harm. Most patients sue the organizations in such cases, a truthful account of the error to both the management and the concerned party aids faster mitigation of the errors thereby giving them an opportunity to develop an understanding. Besides the professional obligations in the practice of medicine, a number of reasons validate truth telling some of which include the fact that lying is an inherent wrong. Lying is a social vise that everyone detests. People may therefore lie depending on the relativity of the scenarios but they all consider lying as a social evil, which they therefore discourage. Parents strive to develop honesty personalities in their children. Such develop cohesive families in which the members do not hurt one another. Collective responsibility to uphold honesty in people results in the development of an ideal society in which people do not withhold the truth from others. Honesty is relative and infers diverse meanings all of which begin from truth telling1. This way, the society thus becomes one with minimal evil. Patients on the other hand entrust their lives on the professionalism in their doctors. They thus do not expect the doctors to lie to them. Owing to this, patients tell their doctors truths about their conditions and expect their doctors to do the same from the doctors. Acting indifferently by lying in such an essential communication process breaks the trust of either party, thereby impairing the effectiveness of the process. Additionally, lying creates a barrier between patients and their doctors. The diagnosis relies on the factuality of the communication process between the two. By each party lying to the other thus hampers the effectiveness of the diagnosis thereby impairing the treatment. Doctors for example are always in charge of the conversation. They therefore need to create an enabling environment for their patients to offer as much information with them about their condition as possible. They can only achieve this by appearing honest with their patients thus appearing trustworthy. Additionally, after diagnosis the treatment process relies on the patient to execute the doctor’s direction directions on such patient issues as the subsequent intake of the drugs and the follow up visits to the facility. To implement such directions appropriately, the patients need to know of the truth about conditions. Such therefore demand that the doctors operate truthfully yet professionally in order to package some of the harsh truths about their patient’s conditions in order to minimize psychological harm. Truthfulness is also important in the practice since lying breaks the patient trust of the doctor. Doctors for reasons best known to them may opt to lie to their patients. While such may serve their interests for the time being, when the patients later find out that the doctors had lied to them, they lose trust in such doctors and therefore treat such with contempt. Patients are the primary subjects in such cases; they feel the pains and suffer the consequences of the diseases. They will therefore always investigate the course of their suffering this includes visiting different doctors should the first fail to deliver. In such follow up inspection especially by other doctors, the patients learn the truths about their conditions some of which an initial patient could have lied about. Such revelations result in the patients losing trust of the doctors thereby sharing such intricate information among themselves. This way, they spoil the doctor’s reputation in the society thus paralyzing his or her practice. It is important for doctors to tell their patients the truth since the patients always want to know of their condition. According to researches, patients always want to know about their medical conditions. Such information is important in self-evaluation and the development of healthier lives in which they are capable of managing their conditions. People suffer from different some of which are chronic therefore relying on the ability of the patient’s management. Patients therefore demand the truth about their conditions from their doctors. The development of such conditions therefore dictates that doctors tell give their patients detailed and truthful accounts of their conditions. Lying in such situations presents a substantive amount of risk on the lives of the patients besides being unethical. In retrospect, truthfulness is essential in the creation of an ideal coherent society. Most people understand such thus strive to develop the honest personalities. Lying is impractical and a lie will definitely lead to another thus creating a lying culture in an individual. It is therefore advisable that people avoid lies especially in circumstances whose efficacy rely on such. Such professions as the medical practice have therefore incorporated truthfulness in their ethical practices thereby compelling their practitioners to tell the truth to their patients. The disobedience of such attracts punishments of varying depths some of which are self-inflicted such as the loss of both reputation and clients for private practitioners while others are disciplinary measures set by the respective institutions. Bibliography Helga, K. & Peter, S. (2009). A companion to boiethics second edition. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing company. Read More