Nursing And Healthcare Ethics: Saint Francis Medical Center College Of Nursing

As a registered nurse practicing in the state of California I am responsible for practicing within my states legal regulations and nursing scope of practice. My concern for the welfare of the sick and injured allows me to practice ethical provisions of nursing. These are required if I am to carry out competent and effective nursing care. Nursing encompasses the prevention of illness, the alleviation of suffering, and the protection, promotion, and restoration of health in the care of individuals. Therefore, as health care professionals we must be familiar with the different philosophical forces, ethical principles, theories and values that influence nursing. At the same time, we must be respectful to our patient’s

between two sets of human values, both of which are judged to be “good” but neither of

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.

Ethical Principles Nurses are required to make responsible judgments, decisions, and actions. When making decisions related to patients, they have to uphold the ethics governing the profession and guarantee quality and safety. Moreover, nurses should respect patients, unobstructed by considerations of their social or economic status, individual attributes, or medical conditions (Winland-Brown, Lachman, & Swanson, 2015a). Nurses have the duty to promote health and care, preserve wholeness of character and honesty, and observe professionalism (Winland-Brown, Lachman, & Swanson, 2015b). Moreover, they have to be accountable for every single decision that they make.

The three attributes were chosen on the basis that it takes a special type of person to

A nurse is given an opportunity to help patients, either if its by helping them through a very serious sickness or just helping a patient get to the bathroom on time, or a time when happiness is overfilling the room and a child is being born. Registered nurses provide a wide variety of patient care services (Mitchell, p.12). A Nurse must always know where to begin and where to stop, as any other career in the health field there is always something that cannot be done by everyone but only the certified person, a nurse must always remain inside her scope of practice to prevent any misunderstandings. A nurse must also follow a code of ethics , the code of ethics of the American Association of Medical Assistants states that a nurse should at all times render service with full respect and dignity of humanity, respect confidential information obtained by a patients file, uphold the honor and high principles the profession and accept its discipline, and last but not least always want to improve her services to better serve the health and well being of the community. (Mitchell, p.65).

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.

Being a nurse is not just a profession, it is a privilege and an honor. With it being a profession where there is an opportunity to touch many patients’ lives, there must be regulations, laws, and codes that nurses must abide by. There are certain professional traits that a nurse must possess to make them not only a good nurse but a great nurse. There are various nursing theories that a nurse can base their practice upon and many historical figures of the past that guide the nurses of today and of the future.

In nursing you must have these qualities to provide your patient with the best care that you are able to give. I think one of the important aspects of nursing is to do no harm. This is one of the most important rules of nursing and I think one of the important rules that I will follow

Ethics, the rules and principles that guide right behaviors or conduct, are foundational to the field of bioethics, which focuses on ethical issues in healthcare (Mclennon, Uhrich, Lasiter, Chamnes, & Helft, 2013). Nurses are faced with ethical decision making principles daily when caring for their patients, some days more than others. According to Yoder-Wise (2011), ethics may be distinguished from the law because ethics is internal to an individual, looks to the ultimate “good” of an individual rather than society as a whole, and concerns the “why” of one’s actions (p. 91). In this particular situation, the nurse has to decide if she will respect the wishes of the patient’s family members or be upfront and honest with her patient and

Oftentimes, I am asked the question of why I am a nurse, and truth be told, sometimes I don’t know the answer why I want to be a nurse. All I really know is that I have wanted to help those in need since I was a little girl. Time has really flown, I‘ve been a professional nurse for almost 26 years. When we discuss the topic of making ethical decisions today, I look to the very beginning of my nursing career. I was very happy to see my pediatric patients had been discharged home from their illness (e.g. fever, pneumonia, diarrhea, and infection disease etc) after we took good care of them. One day, the parents of a patient who was 2 year old boy with acute kidney

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).

The functions of ethics are a type of guide on how to think about Nurses need to be aware of ethics to ensure that they are providing effective patient care that is safe and legal. Nursing itself is an ethical activity as one of the main aims of the profession is to do good and to avoid or minimize doing harm. (Chaloner, 2007). Trust is one of the important values concerning nursing ethics as is human relationship, collectively this ethical values have great importance for effective patient care. It can be said that nurses should gather trust of all people involved, that being patients and their families based primarily on just understanding.

Ethical dilemmas commonly faced in the nursing profession arises when nurses are at crossroads between moral ideologies and competing demands of miscellaneous parties; this includes “the client’s desires, the physician’s orders, the family’s demands, the bureaucracy of the hospital, the law, as well as the nurse’s physical and emotional limitations” (Chambliss, 1996, p. 93). One common ethical issue encountered by nurses’ today is the interjection of advance directives to his/her innate duty to care. Specifically, this paper presents a case vignette about a Jehovah’s Witness, who is refusing a necessary blood transfusion due to religious beliefs. After analysing the ethical dilemma, I strongly believe that the client’s autonomical decision

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).