Case Study: WHEN RADIATION THERAPY KILLS.
1.The concepts of Ethics are illustrated in this chapter. Ethics is a
concern of humans who have freedom of choice. Ethical choices are
decisions made by individuals who are responsible for the consequences of
their actions. Responsibility is a key element of ethical action and means
acceptance of costs, duties and obligations for the decisions made.
Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutions; it means
that mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action, and
who is responsible. Liability extends the concepts of responsibility
further to the area of laws. Responsibility, accountability and liability
are issues that are raised by radiation technology. In this case we see
that the carelessness or laziness of the medical technician, the lack of
training in the handling of the equipment (software), also of the
maintenance of the updates of the software can cause the life a person.
2.Information systems and organizations influence one another. Information
systems are built by managers to serve the interest of the business firm.
At the same time, the organization must be aware of and open to the
influences of information systems to benefit from new technologies. In
these cases carelessness, laziness of the medical technicians who
administered treatment, lack of appropriate updates in software, training,
The Essay on The System that Created Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is a subject of increasing debate and tension in American society. The debate seems to be more emotional than intellectual, and it has probably generated more tension than anything else. People tend to over examine the ethical and moral issues that affirmative action raises while forgetting to analyze the system that has created it.Often, affirmative action is looked upon as the ...
safety procedures and staffing are primarily to blame.
Organization was responsible for lack of properly budgeting of time and
resources for properly training doctors and medical technicians, there was
no room on already limited budgets for the training that equipment
manufactures claimed was required. Management was responsible for
understaffed and overworked staff and for no safety procedures in place to
check their work or time to do so; for lack of control and poor people
management as well as uses technology without appropriate updates in
software.
Technology was responsible for lack some of necessary safeguards given the
amounts of radiation that linear accelerators can deliver. For example,
many linear accelerators was unable to alert users when a dosage of
radiation far exceeded the necessary amount to effectively damage a
cancerous tumor.
3. I feel that these errors cause by humans or machines could be
prevented: if software had some type of safeguards that control the amount
of radiation that they can deliver, if the technician or machine operators
were more aware of the message errors, that appear on the screen, and if
the hospitals had given the proper training to their staff. Technicians,
hospital and the software manufacturer all need to cooperated with each
other to create safety procedures, software features in order to prevent
this to happen, all of them are responsible. Each of them had the
opportunity to prevent this type of things to happen and they all should
accept the blame for these incidents.
4.The use of a central reporting agency that gathered data on
radiation-related accidents would help reduce the number of radiation
therapy errors in the future because this would help the state to create a
common set of safety procedures, software features, reporting standards
and certification requirements for technicians.
5. If I were to design electronic software for a linear acceleration I
will certainly put some type of safeguards that control the amount of
The Term Paper on Hazard: Occupational Safety And Health And Information
The Hazard Communication Standard [63] first went into effect in 1985 and has since been expanded to cover almost all workplaces under OSHA jurisdiction. The details of the Hazard Communication standard are rather complicated, but the basic idea behind it is straightforward. It requires chemical manufacturers and employers to communicate information to workers about the hazards of workplace ...
radiation that they can deliver and by this way trying to prevent the
overdose of radiation. I would definitely work on software improvement to
prevent computer crashes as well as strive for precision of equipment.
