The demand for nursing is increasing and rising each and every single day with an increase in the birth rate and the aging population. Unfortunately, the supply of efficient and skilled nurses is unable to meet their demand thus leading to overworking and overstretching of the available nurses. Nurses constitute the highest percentage of the employees in the health care industry, but this percentage is unable to satisfy the ever-growing number of healthcare work fully. Notably, ethical issues in nursing are one of the hottest topics in the globe today. Nurses face many difficulties and challenges in their bid to protect and optimize health and abilities, prevent illness and injuries and facilitate healing. Nurses are faced with an ethical dilemma …show more content…
Similar to other health practices, ethical issues in nursing arises chiefly with the changing environment within the medical professional as well as technological advancements that come with it. Different individuals have different principles that might completely vary from other people. As a result, an organization or a sector in the economy needs to for and develop ethical standards that should be followed by every employee in that organization and sector. Ethical principles give guidelines on how to behave appropriately in front of patients and fellow workers. Ethical issues present dilemmas for nurses and require a nurse or the whole health care facility to choose between alternatives that must be evaluated as right or wrong. All nurses should be conversant width ethical requirements and need considering that they influence service delivery, professional relationship between the nurse and the patient, customer satisfaction and the group cohesiveness between the nurses of the same organization. By observing ethical principles in nursing and health care, in general, there is an increased likelihood that health facilities will automatically increase the number of their …show more content…
Most of the ethics formulated and developed by American Nurses Association (ANA) and help to guides nurses and all medical practitioners towards the right direction in a difficult circumstance that needs serious consideration before actually making a move. Ethics are meant to provide answers to moral questions even in occurrences wherein a patient may be in terminal danger. Notably, ethics teaches all medical practitioners the best way to handle patients who are ailing with different infections and to provided them with the support and comfort they need and deserve. Nurses can get a chance and opportunity to advance their skills and knowledge of ethical principles through education and training and familiarizing themselves with the changing in a nursing environment in the form of technology and rules. Furthermore, ethics requires nurses to follow physician’s instructions to the letter or they can be held liable for negligence or ignorance is something happens to the patient. Also, the nurses have a moral obligation to alert and inform the physician on the medical progress of the patient or any change of the patient’s health.
One of the hardest things for healthcare professionals to accept is the fact that not everything that they do is in the best interest of their patients. As a result, upholding ethical principles
Studies have shown that many factors have been contributing to influence patient’s care in an ethical manner. What factors could affects one decision for their medical care? Does it also included the nurse’s individual views or should consider their moral obligations? But what is ethics really is? Based on the book Nursing Ethics by Butts & Rich, “Ethics is a systematic approach to understand, analyze, and distinguish matters of right and wrong, good and bad, and admirable and deplorable as they relate to the well-being”. Ethics should follow the current AMA guidelines.
Nursing is a career that is governed by a set of ethical principles. The duties of a nurse consist of care and support and its important that nurses are aware of their professional ethics. These principles are put into place to uphold and maintain moral values in healthcare. The American Nurses Association (ANA) code of ethics for nurses consists of nine provisions, outlined in the Code of Ethics for nurses with Interpretive Statements. These provisions are constructed to blueprint the role and responsibilities of a nurse. The chosen provisions being discussed will refer to the three main principles of patient autonomy, patient confidentiality, and patient rights.
Ethical practice is another component of the social contract of nursing which is a reflection of the values, beliefs and moral principles of the nursing profession. The American Nurses Association (ANA) has established the “Code of Ethics for Nurses” which serves as a “guideline” for the nursing profession in which clinical judgements and
The topic of ethics is prevalent in health care and addresses a broad range of topics in nursing. In almost every interaction with a patient there could be a situation that may bring up the question of ethics. Fortunately, there is the realization that placing the nurse in the care of a patient, may put the medical personnel in an environment where the ethics are questioned. There are whole departments dedicated to advising nurses in these situations. There are also ethic committees to help guide you when you find yourself in a situation that may question your practice or circumstances.
The history of ethics has been around for a long time. Nurses have an ethical obligation to care for patientsand do no harm. Ethical conflicts and dilemmas occur every day in the health care world. “Ethics is defined as the rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession”(FARLEX, 2011).The nurse should have the adequate skills and experience to provide great care to the patient. Nurses should always accept their moral and responsibilities that come along with their job and
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).
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.
Butts and Rich (1-26) point out that effective nursing requires both broad knowledge and a set of well developed abilities and skills. The required tasks, are many and varied and in order to do them properly, care must be taken to respect each patient's rights and sensitivities. This is why, according to the authors, nursing care must be guided by a code of ethics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and discussion of the "Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements" developed by the American Association of Nurses (ANA 1-2).
Nurses are constantly challenged by changes which occur in their practice environment and are under the influence of internal or external factors. Due to the increased complexity of the health system, nowadays nurses are faced with ethical and legal decisions and often come across dilemmas regarding patient care. From this perspective a good question to be raised would be whether or not nurses have the necessary background, knowledge and skills to make appropriate legal and ethical decisions. Even though most nursing programs cover the ethical and moral issues in health care, it is questionable if new nurses have the depth of knowledge and understanding of these issues and apply them in their practice
The Code of Ethics for Nurses was created to be a guide for nurses to perform their duties in a way that is abiding with the ethical responsibilities of the nursing profession and quality in nursing care. The Code of Ethics has excellent guidelines for how nurses should behave, however; these parameters are not specific. They do not identify what is right and wrong, leaving nurses having to ultimately make that decision. Ethics in nursing involves individual interpretation based on personal morals and values. Nursing professionals have the ethical accountability to be altruistic, meaning a nurse who cares for patients without self-interest. This results in a nurse functioning as a patient advocate, making decisions that are in the best
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.
Ethics is an essential aspect of health care practice and those working in the nursing profession are often subject to frequent ethical dilemmas. It is essential for all nurses to be aware of the importance of ethics in health care and to practice within the ethico-legal parameters that govern the profession. However, while this is relatively easy in theory, ethics is not a black and white subject and often one’s culture, upbringing, attitudes and beliefs can influence what one views as ethical and this can therefore influence practice. This report will discuss the importance of ethics in nursing practice. The definition of ethics will firstly be presented followed
Codes of ethics contain a coherent set of normative principles underlying a nurse’s purpose and associated values (Vanlaere and Gastmans, 2007). Two perspectives of ethics are the ethics of justice and the ethics of care (Botes, 2000). The ethics of justice constitutes an ethical perspective in terms of which ethical decisions are made on the basis of universal principles and rules, and in an impartial and verifiable manner with a view to ensuring the fair and equitable treatment of all people (Botes, 2000). The ethics of care, on the other hand, constitutes an ethical approach in terms of which involvement, harmonious relations and the needs of others play an important part in ethical decision making in each ethical situation (Botes, 2000).
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.
It is fundamental that nurses respect human and cultural rights as well as being respectful to all people. The International Council of Nurses (ICN, 2012) has established The ICN code of ethics for nurses which influences a nurse’s clinical practice by providing a guide for healthcare professionals to work in an ethical manner that aids the patient in the most effective way. It outlines that a nurse must support the basic rights of patients by being respectful and ethical (ICN, 2012). Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen (2015) suggest that practicing in professional ethics must consist of taking into consideration the rights and values of all people through the use of effective communication and critical planning towards achieving outcomes. However, the implementation of ethics in a nurse’s clinical practice should be examined and assessed on a regular basis in response to continuous developments in society (Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen, 2015).