Ted is in a clinic with his elderly client, Gretchen, for a routine blood workup, which they do every other month. He notices Gretchen is bruised on the face and arms. For a while he makes small talk with her, and then he asks her about the bruises. She is somewhat evasive but indicates, “They weren’t the result of no fall!” Without explicitly blaming her daughter and son-in-law, with whom she lives, Gretchen makes it quite clear that the bruises are not the result of an accident. After the blood test, during which neither the doctor, who sees her briefly, nor the technician make any mention of the bruises, Ted takes Gretchen home. He toys with the idea of reporting the bruises to protective services at the county Office of Aging but decides not to. He bases his decision on the fact that the law does not specifically require him to do so, that it would be hard and take a lot of time to have to place Gretchen in another living arrangement, and that the daughter seems like a very nice person whom Ted does not feel like stirring up over an uncomfortable situation.
The above hypothetical practice situations are designed to help you apply what you have learned in this chapter. For each situation, decide what was done in the situation that was unethical.
