ABSRACT

Background: A framework to address ethical issues in the public health sector is needed. This framework should outline ethical issues faced by the geriatric population. 

Aim: To assist in providing an ethics framework, in the public sector, for the geriatric community in South Africa. Setting: 22 participants from the Free State, North West and Northern Cape took part in the study. Participants were from 6 geriatric institutions.

Methods: A five-point Likert scale, containing 15 statements that were grouped into three indexes, relating to ethics and the geriatric population was used.  

Results: Systems, processes and practices reflect ethical behaviour. The understanding of how to apply ethics in working environment, is a need that must be addressed. The ethics in public health can be understood from social, applied and professional ethics. 

Conclusion: The use of health care principles, within the realm of professional ethics that produces relationship building and care is public ethics. A public health ethic should be identified on the foundation of what public health is essentially. The public health ethic should focus on the community as well as the furtherance of the quality of the well-being and health of the community. 

Contribution: In South Africa, an ethics framework in public health for the geriatric community could not be identified.

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