Challenges Nurses Face in Healthcare

are made could have an impact to nurses, patients and families as well.” (Potter, 2014)

The authors purpose is to make the reader understand organizational climate defined as the policies, practices, and procedures that are rewarded, supported, and expected in an organization regarding a specific organizational domain, such as safety, innovation, customer service, and ethics such as climate for service, climate for safety and ethical climate. The climate for service can be evaluated by employees and customers on the level of customer service. Generally, when it is a strong climate the results will be the same. The climate of safety refers to employee perceptions of an organization's policies, practices, and procedures regarding safety that are rewarded, supported, and expected from employees. The ethical climate can be thought of as shared perceptions among group members regarding what constitutes ethically correct behavior and how ethical issues should be handled within an organization. The assessment of the organizational climate may reveal that the strategic direction of the organizational interest may not be perceived in organizational practices, policies and procedures and the organization may need to redesign to better align with their interest.

Nurses apply their moral and ethical training in difficult scenarios within the workplace where leadership and guidance are necessary in the nursing profession.

I learned that as a nurse it is my duty to always consider my own well being, along with my patient’s. I must keep a high moral character both in the workplace and in my personal life. I must continue to educate myself and keep myself up to date with all the latest nursing practices and research. I must subject myself to peer review and evaluation. I must never let my personal feelings about a patient’s lifestyle affect my care for them. When met with a tough choice that places me in an ethical crisis I must keep a good head on my shoulders and always have my patient’s best interests in mind. If I feel that a situation at work is in direct conflict with my personal values or my oath to be an ethical nurse I must go through the proper channels to work through the problem.

Nursing is not an easy job and those who chose it as their profession are truly special people. Nurses are confronted with ethical decisions that need to be made on a daily basis. Often they know the right thing to do but because of circumstances like institutional structure and conflicts with others, obstacles are created and distress ensues (Jenner, 2001). It is during times like these that nurses must rely on the training that they have received as well as the code of ethics that has been set down for their profession in order to do the right thing.

There are many different careers which entail much more than just a particular degree from a post-secondary education program. Typically, all careers have a specific code and level of ethics which are incorporated into the daily responsibilities one is expected to perform in their chosen field. For the basis of this paper, I have chosen to write about the nursing code of ethics. Nursing has a professional code of ethics along with the level/employee behavior usually being currently attainable, meaning that the behavior expected is normally exhibited by individuals. (Manias 508). However, although nursing seems to require behavior that is “normally” exhibited and tends to be one of the most popular medical fields, there are numerous amounts of ethical issues which have emerged in this field of work since the few being noted in Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing. (Ulrich et al. 2).

Such factors may affect the degree to which nurses are able to fulfill their moral obligations and/or the number and type of ethical dilemmas they may face.

Moral distress is experienced by nurses every day in today’s health care system. Moral distress has been found to be manifested as anger, frustration, guilt, loss of self-worth, depression, powerlessness and helplessness (Zuzelo, 2007, p. 346). Failure to recognize and manage moral distress is causing nurses to be “burned out” have high turnover rate, and even leaving nursing profession all together.

A new nurse faces a formidable set of challenges when walking onto their first job. Sadly, nursing schools do not truly prepare the new nurse for the shock of caring for patients and the responsibility that goes with it.

Effective nursing, in order to properly serve patients as well as the greater community, must necessarily be based on a strong, unshakeable foundation of ethical practice, which can be expressed through various theoretical nursing models. This paper will examine the theoretical basis for author’s own ethical nursing practice, and relate the theoretical discussion to the specific Phenomenon of Interest that was previously identified in earlier papers.

Additionally, they help provide the moral courage to face tough decisions and difficult situations encountered when caring for patients in healthcare. Having an established core message of nursing aids every member of the profession in understanding the importance of values, morals, and ethics in the delivery of holistic nursing care. Thankfully, the nursing profession is one of the most unique disciplines within healthcare, and the value that nurses place on patient advocacy illustrates how dynamic the relationship between a patient and their nurse can be. Ethics is an essential component of nursing care, and is embedded in the profession’s fundamental makeup, in nurses’ character, and how they deliver care. It is important for nurses practicing in today’s challenging healthcare settings to understand, value, and align their practice with fundamentals established by our

As is evident from the definition, ethics is largely subjective and will be influenced by a number of internal and external factors such as attitudes, beliefs, family upbringing, cultural and ethnic background and work environment to name but a few of the many (Freegard et al., 2013). It is important for a nurse to be aware of what ethical practice is and to be aware of the factors that can impact this in order to better understand their ethical point of view as well as the ethical point of view of others, to better practice in a manner that is ethical and right.

Ethics and Morals play an important role in the nursing profession; nurses are confronted with choices to make every day, and some of them more challenging than others. Ethics are affirmations between what it can be right or erroneous. For our society ethics is presented as a complex system of principles and beliefs. This system serves as an approach with the purpose of ensuring the protection of each individual within the society. On the other hand, morals are basic standards between what is right or wrong; each individual learns to identify these standards during the early stages of human development (Catalano, 2009). A person with morals is usually somebody who recognizes how to respond to the needs of another individual by giving care and keeping a level of responsibility while giving this care (Catalano, 2009).

Nursing, in my view, has always been a field in which moral courage was inherent. Nursing is one of the few fields in which individuals disregard their own personal wellbeing in favor of other people’s health. Moral courage is an elusive topic to define, as it is such an intangible concept. According to Murray, “moral courage is considered to be the pinnacle of ethical behavior; it requires a steadfast commitment to fundamental ethical principles despite potential risks, such as threats to reputation, shame, emotional anxiety, isolation from colleagues, retaliation, and loss of employment (2010.) To exemplify this issue, Murray continued to give an example of moral courage with a novice nurse named Emily.

In the medical fraternity, nurses make up the largest healthcare profession. The care of patients depends on the well-being of the nurses, and issues affecting them may affect patients, directly or indirectly. As a profession, nursing, can be both an extremely rewarding and challenging activity. A number of problems exist, and most are becoming worse because of lack of lack of mechanisms to address these issues. The three greatest issues affecting nursing today include improving health education, lack of respect for nurses and cost cutting. Although these problems are not clinical, they influence the efficiency of the performance of nurses in their delivery of services.