Ethical Considerations : The American Nurse Act

Nurses confront numerous dilemmas throughout their professional lives. The different types of dilemmas include, but are not limited to, ethical, moral, and legal dilemmas. These are the three most common dilemmas in nursing. A dilemma can be defined in many different ways. But all dilemmas are situations in which you have to make a difficult choice. Chiaranai (2011) states that an “ethical dilemma is a circumstance that arises from fundamental conflicts between ethical beliefs, duties, principles and theories” (p. 250). Therefore, an ethical dilemma forces the nurse to address thought on what is right and what the harm might be to the patient.

Today nurses in all roles participate in ethical decision making arising from mortality, relationships, and conduct issues surrounding patient care and families. This is particularly the situation with ethical issues involving pediatrics and those unable to take their own decisions. While the patients’ interests should come first, there are many other factors that come into play when providing pediatric patient care: parents’ knowledge, cultural and religious practices, and the pediatric patient’s knowledge of their disease. Therefore, it is essential for nurses to follow the American Nurses Association (ANA) code of ethics to carry out nursing responsibilities in a manner consistent with quality in nursing care and the ethical obligations of the profession. In this paper I will discuss the ethical issues that deal with a fourteen year old boy with Cystic Fibrosis (C.F.). He has been faced with the proposition from his pulmonologist that he will not survive another acute respiratory distress attack and will have to intubated if his status deteriorated. However, he and his parents are not agreeing on whether or not he should be intubated if his status deteriorated with his next attack. This poses a huge ethical dilemma because as a nurse we are the patient’s advocate and need to do everything we can to make our patient comfortable as well as having the parents understand and accept the patient wants and desires.

Provision 8.1 of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics denotes that health is a universal right. The provision states, “the nurse collaborates with other health professionals and the public to protect human rights, promote health diplomacy, and reduce health disparities” (Lachman, Swanson, & Windland-Brown, 2015, p. 365). From chapter 1, the ethical theory that best fits provision 8.1 is utilitarianism. The ethical theory of utilitarianism theorizes “one should act so as to do the greatest good for the greatest number” (Baillie, McGeehan, Garrett, & Garrett, 2013, p. 4). This theory promotes a universal method because it signifies that even if a decision is made and does not benefit every single person; however, benefits most

According to American Nurses Association (ANA), (2010) “the nurse promotes, advocates for and strives to protect the heath, safety and right of the patient” (p. 6). Nursing responsibilities should be acted at the highest standard and must be based on legal and ethical obligations.

In the field of nursing, the ANA Code of Ethics is designed to provide specific bylaws that will influence the practices of health care professionals inside the industry. However, there are different advocacy campaigns that will have an impact on how it is interpreted and applied. In the case of advocacy for population health, these issues mean that there could be moral dilemmas faced in the process (most notably: lifestyle choices and their impact on the individual). (Butts, 2012)

Nurses have the ability to have their voice received which can aid with change in health care by a number of ways, one of which is to become active within the community and advocate for nursing and advanced care for the public. One way this can be done is to influence legislators by becoming active in supporting health care bills.

Nurses play and important role in the health care system. Nurses have excellent inherent to manage change to improve the health care system (The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. n.d.). They can be as innovators to lead changes. Nurses understand how to approach care and enhance quality at the lower cost (Nursing 's role in health care reform - American Nurse Today. n.d.). They can engage in research to Generate evidence-based practice and help shape the quality and safety through collecting and tracking data to enhance care. Nursing research benefits create the logical framework for clinical usage, prevention, and improved patient outcomes. Nurses can Redesign nursing education (Nursing 's role in health care reform - American Nurse Today. n.d.). All nurses should to maintain necessary competencies to match the requirements of the population aging and various culture and community health care needs, (Nursing 's role in health care reform - American Nurse Today. n.d.).

Nurses are faced with ethical issues and dilemmas on a regular basis. Nurses must understand his or her values and morals to be able to deal adequately with the ethical issues he or she is faced with. Some ethical issues nurses are exposed to may be more difficult than others and the ethical decision making process is learned over time.

There are three major organizations in nursing that have made great impacts on the way nurses guide and represent their profession. One of the organizations is the American Nurses Association (ANA) whose mission statement is “nurses advancing our profession to improve health for all” and their philosophy is committed to ensure that there are an adequate supply of “high-skilled and well-educated nurses is available” (ANA, 2014). The ANA helps to advance the nursing profession through fostering high standards, the promotion of the general welfare of nursing professionals in the workplace, projecting a positive as well as realistic view of nursing practices, and lobbying within Congress about health care issues that affect both nurses and the general public (ANA, 2014). The ANA is primarily responsible for restructuring healthcare through legislature and lobbying on both state and national levels (ANA, 2014).

In reading through various journal articles on the subject, I see how important it is for nurses to get involved in the political process. Nurses can sometimes get so focused on their job of taking care of their patients, that they fail to get involved with political matters. Nurses are great at advocating for their patients but many of them are just not prepared to voice their concerns publicly about staffing and funding shortages and also for patient’s safety (O'Connor, 2014). Nurses do have a lot of potential in contributing to the political process by participating in professional nursing organizations or through policy committees in the workplace. “To be successful

While the nursing profession is fulfilling, it is not without challenges. Nurses are faced with a multitude of ethical dilemmas in clinical practice on a daily basis. According to Fant (2012) no matter where nurses function in their diverse roles, they are faced with ethical decisions that can impact them and their patients. Some examples of moral issues that nurses encounter in contemporary nursing practice and research include but not limited to: refusal of treatment, scarcity of resources, disagreement with caregivers, treating patients with impaired decision-making, futile treatment decisions for cancer patients, end-of-life decisions, advanced treatment directives, and euthanasia (Leuter, Petrucci, Mattei, Tabassi, & Lancia, 2013).

Ethical issues in nursing will always be an ongoing learning process. Nurses are taught in nursing school what should be done and how. Scenarios are given on tests with one right answer. However, there are situations that nurses may encounter that may have multiple answers and it is hard to choose one. “Ethical directives are not always clearly evident and people sometimes disagree about what is right and wrong” (Butts & Rich, 2016). When an ethical decision is made by a nurse, there must be a logical justification and not just emotions.

Ethical dilemmas are familiar to most nurses, but resolving dilemmas is not an easy task for them. The ethical decision-making framework is a good guide when dealing with ethical dilemmas. Firstly, nurses need to identify issues from different perspectives from all those associated with the issues (McDonald & Then 2014). Above three cases involve with nurses, patients, hospitals and education providers. Each party has different issues such as patients being at risk, nurses not being professional, etc.

American Nurses Association defines nursing as “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and population”( Potter,P.,& Perry, A. 2005,1-5). Thus making nursing dynamic and ever changing. However, when nursing

It is crucial to remember a nurse’s role as a patient advocate but it is equally as important to not lose sight of the affect nurses can have on politics. Until this semester I personally had little interest vested in politics, I was unaware of the impact that an entity such as nursing could actually make. Currently nurses consist of the largest sector of the healthcare workforce. There are 3.1 million nurses in the United States, a large number that is often overlooked by the government because enough nurses are not advocating for political changes within the healthcare field. As we learned in class this has led to nurses being referred to as the sleeping giant. The number of employed nurses in this country is rather large and as such they