Essay on Critique of Barbara Huttman’s A Crime of Compassion

Autonomy can override beneficence when life-support is withdrawn (Prozgar, 2010). In addition, when a physician takes the position of withdrawing life-supporting equipment, the principle of non-maleficence is severed. Since helping patients die violates the physician’s virtue of duty to save lives,” distributed justice is served by releasing a room in the intensive care unit for a patient who has a higher chance of resolving their medical problems (Pozgar, G. 2010). There are so many inflict fuzzy gray areas and ideas about conflicting DNR policies that political disputes had to go to the courts to sort out the issues legally.

The NMC (2015) are the providers of the Nursing Code of Conduct. The code contains the professional standards to which all nurses must uphold, allowing for accountability of patients that come into their care. As well as the code of conduct, all nursing professionals have a responsibility to develop their knowledge in relation to law within clinical practice, and furthermore, ethical frameworks that are linked to judgment and decision making when providing care (Savage & Moore, 2006). In light of this, the overall aim of this essay is to elaborate on issues surrounding law and ethics in nursing. To do so, a case study has been chosen from a previous clinical experience. The focus of the case study will be on the decision of withdrawal from life sustaining treatment. Emphasis will be largely on the law and ethics concerning the issue of withdrawal from treatment. Moreover, the ethics and law involved in the palliative/advanced end of life care planning and decision making. In order to protect the identity and uphold the confidentiality of the case study, a pseudonym will be used throughout. Hendrick (2005) portrays confidentiality as being ‘one of the most important and well established moral obligations of health-care ethics’.

Working in the field as health care professionals, we are faced with ethical dilemmas almost always. Although each individual posses different values, there are specific codes of conduct to abide by, despite personal beliefs. Without the use of a structural code, individuals in the health care field would make decisions based on their own personal beliefs in accordance to their culture and religion. In the case of Marion and the pacemaker, we witness the desires of the patient at hand, Marion, and her family, be interrogated by the floor nurses. Although the intent behind the actions of the floor nurses can be described as morally just, thinking they are helping preserve the life of Marion, based on medical ethics, their behavior is of some degree to be questioned. This paper will focus on the boundaries we witness crossed by floor nurses and how they go against the medical ethics approved, and what effects they have on patients and their care givers.

Ethics, or also referred to as moral philosophy, helps determine when things are right and when things are wrong. To kill or not to kill? To abuse or not to abuse? To hurt or not to hurt? In the nursing profession, as in all major health professional fields, nurses are bound to a certain Nurse’s Code of Ethics (Kelly, 2010). Obey the code, and a registered nurse can potentially live a long healthy career in the nursing field. Violate the nurse’s code of ethics, and one can seek penalties including but not limited to fines, fees, revocation, license suspension, probation, and even imprisonment. So what exactly happens to a Nurse who disobeys the code of ethics? The case between the State of Florida vs Mr. D.R.O. helps in getting a better understanding of what happens when a registered healthcare professional, in this case a Nurse, challenges the nursing code of ethics. Is the verdict appropriate in the defendant’s case? Were the consequences adequately applicable to the damages the defendant imposed? How can future and active registered nurses avoid situations like this in their career? Although the concept of ethics and the answers to some of these questions can seem common sense to most of us, in some cases, our minds can be clouded or disturbed

The dilemma for ethics committees brought up by the story of Patrick is a question of how much is too much. As technologies in the medical field continue to advance, people can live substantially longer lives, but are they lives worth living? Some people, like Patrick, don’t think being paralyzed is a quality of life worth living. Others, like Armando, refuse to be made DNR and cling to life even if it consists of communicating by blinking of the eye. The questions raised in this book are awful decisions that nobody should ever have to make. Whatever the committees and doctors choose to do can keep patients alive and allow them to have a low quality of live, be in constant pain and be a burden to society, or keep a terminally ill patient comfortable until he or she has said their good-byes and let nature take its course.

Brittany Maynard was one of the people to use the Death with Dignity Act in Organ and once said,“To have control of my own mind…to go with dignity is less terrifying. When I look at both options I have to die, I feel this is far more humane” (Sandeen, 2014). No matter what, we will all eventually die, but we should have the right to die as humanely as possible. The Death with Dignity Act is an end-of-life choice possibility for terminally ill patients to be given the freedom to decide for themselves what it means to die with dignity. This act allows them to die with dignity by providing them with lethal medications prescribed by a physician (The Oregon Department of Human Services, 2006). The Death with Dignity Act started to allow people with six months or less to live, the right to die in a manner and at the time of their own choosing. Also, even though modern medicine has benefited humanity greatly, it cannot completely resolve the suffering and distress that comes with the dying process, so Death with Dignity can provide a painless end-of-life choice for suffering individuals (Humphry, 2009). Although Death with Dignity is a controversial topic I feel it can be very beneficial especially since people go through a long process just to try to get the medication and the ones that get it really need it. I chose this topic because death always has been interesting to me and I one day hope to have a career

My essay topic is whether or not physician assisted suicide is morally permissible. I intend to argue that it is permissible because a competent patient ultimately has the right to choose for themselves the course of their life, including how it will end. To lie in a hospital bed in a vegetative state, unable to see, think, speak, eat, being totally unaware of your surroundings or those of your loved ones nearby speaks loudly of the pain and suffering at all levels for a terminally ill patient. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is ethically justifiable in certain cases, most often those cases involving unrelenting suffering. While PAS is not

Ethics, in our society, are the moral principles that govern our behavior, dictating what is right from wrong. The specifics of ethics changes as values in our society change and evolve. This occurs in Rebecca Skloots book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One major reoccurring theme in the book is the lack of informed consent and autonomy. Fortunately, now there are safeguards which protect human rights in regard to health care and research. The Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, created The Belmont Report, which is one such safeguard establishing principles for all human research (USDHHS, 1979). This paper will discuss the ethical issue of informed consent within The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the disregard to parts of the Belmont Report, as well as compare the role of the nurse in charge of Henrietta’s care versus the standards of care set for modern nurses.

The television screen showed the image of a nurse, murdering the people he was supposed to be saving, by injecting them with his own concoctions of drugs. The disgust was beyond imaginable, as he was expected to be the one that saves people, yet he broke that expectation as the unprotected patients’ lives faded away. Charles Cullen was a New Jersey nurse who broke the bond of trust between nurses and patients. I knew that I had to do this project on him because he changed United States history by creating more laws for hospitals and nurses, so that they patients’ rights were not violated.

A man can give money to the homeless on the same day as …... . Barbara Lazear Ascher wrote a piece called “On Compassion” stating that through people's own experiences, they learn compassion with the trouble right next to us. An argument that has merit, but only to a certain extent. Experiences of the individual will have them learn compassion on their own, but having the unfortunate in our faces will not guarantee a person to learn compassion. In fact, it may do the opposite and create hostility as all of us are imperfect.

This assignment will discuss a case involving an individual known to me. It centres on the real and contentious issue of the “right to die”, specifically in the context of physician-assisted death. This issue is widely debated in the public eye for two reasons. The first considers under what conditions a person can choose when to die and the second considers if someone ever actually has a ‘right to die’. The following analysis will consider solutions to the ethical dilemma of physician-assisted death through the lens of three ethical theories. It will also take into account the potential influence of an individual’s religious beliefs

A nurse’s moral obligations are undoubtedly “to do good or to implement actions that benefit individuals and their support people.” (Kozier & Erb, p.95, 2017). The noble concept of beneficence requires that nurses must provide an adequate standard of care, whilst effectively working within the best interests of the patient. It is evident from the troubling abuse case of Corey Lucas that he has outright neglected the ethical principles necessary for a nurse to possess while practicing. The lack of beneficence within his care makes him ultimately unfit to practice, and this is best reflected in his violence towards Mr. Hausler.

This assignment will explore a case study on an episode of care where a patient with chronic pain was hoisted. This will be written from the perspective of the author, a student nurse. The purpose of this assignment is to underline the ethical, legal and professional issues surrounding the episode of care during nursing practice and how these issues influence the role of the nurse and their professional judgement in delivering holistic, person-centred care for the patient. The author will cover the complications on delivering care when healthcare professionals should consider and respect the patient’s decisions and personal preferences whether it may benefit the patient or not. Therefore, the author will argue the principles of the

Compassion represents an “acknowledgement of another’s suffering and is accompanied by the expression of a desire to ease or end that suffering.” (Van der Cingal, 2009, p. 124) This is a fundamental characteristic usually found in health care workers and nurses especially. In one twelve hour shift, a nurse’s job can change from taking vitals and administering medications to performing life saving measures

Each of the seven primary values encompassed within the code of ethics were involved in this case include, providing safe, compassionate, competent and ethical care, promoting health and well-being, promoting and respecting informed decision-making, preserving dignity, maintaining privacy and confidentiality, promoting justice and being accountable (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008). I am going to thoroughly examine providing safe, compassionate, competent and ethical care, as well as preserving dignity. The code of ethics states under providing safe compassionate, competent and ethical care that nurses’ ethical responsibilities are to follow their practice standards, participate in compassionate care exhibited through actions, behaviours and body language, build trustworthy relationships, be able to fully place oneself in the individuals shoes to fully comprehend their situations, admit to mistakes, and prevent and minimize all forms of harm and violence (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008). This ethical quandary displays how this ethical value was not implemented, the health care aids did not place themselves in their shoes and try to understand their thoughts and feelings or how abandoned and meaningless they felt when they were not even acknowledged. No one