Ethical Issues in Healthcare and Nursing: Elder Care Case Study

Long-term care assists individuals who cannot adequately perform their routine activities of daily living. These activities include dressing, bathing, walking, meal preparation, and taking medications ( Batnitzk,A.,Hayes,D.,& Vinall,P.E. 2014,(c. 5.1). These services are typically for clients over the age of 65 years old and is used to promote independence and security for those who cannot take care of their needs due to illness or debility (c.6.1). The type of provider will depend on the type of care a client needs. For instance, some elderly people that need help with food preparations or everyday activities will request to stay at home and have a family member take care of them. This is one way that long-term care is rendered but is unpaid.

Ethical issues have always affected the role of the professional nurse. Efforts to enact this standard may cause conflict in health care settings in which the traditional roles of the nurse are delineated within a bureaucratic structure. Nurses have more direct contact with patients than one can even imagine, which plays a huge role in protecting the patients’ rights, and creating ethical issues for the nurses caring for the various patients they are assigned to. In this paper I will discuss some of the ethical and legal issues that nurses are faced with each and every day.

Nurses rely on personal knowledge and their professional skills to provide ethical care (Creasia & Friberg, 2011). In everyday practice, nurses must balance the needs of their patients against those of the organization, society and themselves. They strive to deliver the highest level of care for patients, but adjusting for limited organizational and personal resources often requires difficult decisions. This paper explores the following scenario suggested by Maville and Huerta: “You are a nurse providing home care to a mother, and you suspect child abuse after observing the mother’s reaction to her child” (as cited by Arizona State University, 2014). When faced with a moral dilemma, a competent nurse incorporates ethical, bioethical and legal considerations. In the proposed story, incorporating the nursing ethics of advocacy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and collaboration will guide the nurse towards an appropriate and legal course of action.

Anyone who has ever worked in a long term care facility will tell you that at times it can be very difficult. Working with individuals who are suffering from dementia and other kinds of cognitive impairment that come with age can be emotionally draining. We know that this is not the way that it is supposed to be. These individual are a fathers, mothers, and friends who had rich incredible lives. Now they have lost the ability to care for themselves and at times are not even able to recognize the one that they love. The inability to express their thoughts and feelings in a way that others can understand and connect with them leads to a great deal of frustration. The feeling of not being in control of their own lives leads to agitation. At one

Typically the most considered factor when deciding on long term health care is the individual’s financial status. Patients without any resources may qualify for long term care as long they meet certain requirements set by Medicaid payment. Normally this kind of patient is in need of extended 24-hour care and has expended all of their means. Medicaid does not start until all of their financial gains are gone, including savings and for a single adult, their home. If the patient receives monthly payments such as Social Security, this goes to pay the Medicaid bill of the long term care. Hospital care is paid through the patient’s Medicare or Medicaid if they are under the age for Medicare.

In the medical field, the workers are highly trained to be able to make a distinction between what is right and what is wrong. Elder abuse is becoming a serious issue in the health environment. As defined in the website, MedicineNet.com, elder abuse is: “the physical, sexual, or emotional abuse of an elderly person, usually one who is disabled or frail”. The older population consists of people over sixty-five years old. They are very fragile and sometimes they are forgotten or abused. The elderly can be victims of mistreatment in nursing homes, hospitals, or even in their own house. Nursing is the act of promoting health for others, and of providing care and security with the skills nurses have acquired. However, those who are nursing

As head of care, one of my main responsibilities in our home is to keep residents safe from harm. However, on the other hand we have duty to respect residents’ human rights which will cause ethical dilemmas. The difficulty happens in several aspects of around residents’ care through out daily practice.

The health and well-being of society is ultimately impacted by the integrity of scientific records, such as the value, accuracy, and completeness (Horner & Minifie, 2011). As a result, researchers are obligated and entrusted to use the highest standards possible when proposing, reviewing, performing, or reporting research (Horner & Minifie, 2011). Consequently, there may be ethical concerns for a variety of different research topics and/or types of research. The purpose of this paper is to prepare an ethics paper for the intended research topic regarding elder abuse in nursing homes.

Given the aging of the population, elder abuse has become more a prevalent and a more serious issue in recent years. "Every year, an estimated 4 million older Americans are victims of physical, psychological or other forms of abuse and neglect. Those statistics may not tell the whole story. For every case of elder abuse and neglect reported to authorities, experts estimate as many as 23 cases go undetected" (Elder abuse and neglect, 2013, APA report: 1). Elder abuse is both against the law and an ethical issue for the nurse. The nurse must find a way to ensure that the needs of the patient are taken care of, and the stress of the caregiver of the elderly person is managed appropriately. This paper will apply the five steps of ethical decision-making to dealing with the issue (Swinton 2007). The ethics of elder abuse deal with a number of issues that can be extremely sensitive subjects for the nurse; including parent-child relationships; past relationships amongst different members of the family; the responsibilities of caregiving; and the autonomy of the patient.

Throughout the course of their career, nurses will constantly face the reality of death and dying patients. Disparate from medical physicians, nurses are almost always on duty to treat and hand out medication. Therefore, a situation where it is not possible for their patient to completely heal can ultimately put the nurse in a high amount of stress. Such feelings can lead to discomfort with aiding hospice patients and a decrease in nurses in that area (Peters, et al., 2013). The quality of end of life health care is also jeopardized due to the nurse facing ethical issues and death anxiety (Hold, 2017, p. 13). The impact of a patient death can incite more stress in the health care worker, according to Bickham, "Nurses often experience

In this situation I first refuse to render services due to this is a matter of committing fraud against insurance company. Second, I would inform the school that this is unethical pertaining to my code of ethics as well as inform the child’s parent of the schools manipulation of my services as the Behavioral Analyst. Finally I would report the school’s intention to the insurance company as this might has been an on going situation with other children at the school. The Analyst responsibility is to report this to the insurance company in order to maintain their integrity of their position. According to Bailey & Burch (2016) it states that the behavior analyst needs to leave the company and seek employment else where who is more

Nurses face ethical decisions frequently when giving patient care. These dilemmas can result from deciding how to allocate resources such as time or materials. Caring for patients from diverse backgrounds complicates decision-making when faced with dilemmas, because organizations that depend on standards of patient care that may not by culturally congruent. In these situations, the nurse must consider the patient’s beliefs and values along with the organization’s care expectations and bridge the gap between the two (Andrews and Boyle, 2016-a). In this post, I will describe ethical dilemmas with the current state of population health and health disparities, discuss the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explain how social justice

The role of ethics in organizational behavior is the underlying factor to the success and longevity of any organization. A set of rules and guidelines focusing on promoting safety, trust, and responsible practice within the workplace must be established internally. Organizations develop code of ethics that center upon the promotion of good. Ethics are vital in developing trusting relationships between employees and administration within.

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.

The ethical dilemma is a situation by which it’s difficult to determine whether a situation is can be handled without disappointing both sides. Therefore, an ethical dilemma exists when the right thing to do is clear or when members of the healthcare team cannot agree on the right thing to do. Ethical dilemmas require negotiation of different points of view (potter, Perry, Stockert, & Hall 2011pg 78).