Professional/Personal Application Statement
Stephanie Sciaudone
University of Indianapolis Introduction Transitioning into the role of an advanced practice nurse requires more than simply gaining more education or demonstrating leadership abilities beyond that of a traditional registered nurse. Instead, the role of an advanced practice nurse requires an understanding and appreciation of the ethical challenges and issues that will be faced, as well as communicating the importance of ethics to other nursing professionals (Jormsri et al., 2005). In order to be prepared to handle the task of addressing ethical issues, both on a personal and professional level as an advanced practice nurse, it is necessary to demonstrate a comprehension of nursing ethics and to consider how those ethics will be integrated into professional practice. The ethical challenges that will be faced as a nursing professional must be examined, as well as how various concepts that have been learned by studying nursing ethics will be used in practice. In addition, it is necessary to contemplate how ethical development among colleagues will be promoted within the profession and within the larger health care community. Finally, a consideration of how the knowledge from this course in nursing ethics will be used to help in the transition into the advanced practice nursing role is also important.
Ethical Challenges Experienced as a Nursing Professional The greatest single ethical challenge
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.
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.
20–23. (Gemma et al., 2011) Grace, P.J. (2013) Nursing ethics and professional responsibility in advanced practice. 2nd edn. United States: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Ethical knowing or the moral direction of nursing is focused on the nurses’ responsibility of knowing what out to be done and what is good and right (Carper, 1978). Ethical knowing “guides and directs how nurses morally behave in their practices” (Chinn & Maeona, 2011, p. 7). This nurse practices ethics by being a patient advocate and preserving his client's right to choose or refuse care. This patient advocacy will continue as this nurse advances to the role of APN.
Nurses are facing many legal or ethical dilemmas in their career. Nurses should combine knowledge of ethical and legal aspects of health care and professional values into nursing practice. It is very essential to know what kind of dilemmas nurses may face during their profession and how they have been dealt with in the past.
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
Burkhardt, M. & Nathaniel, A. (2008). Ethics & issues: In contemporary nursing, (3rd ed.) Clifton Park, NJ: Delmar
There are nine provisions included in the ANA code of ethics. The provisions can be broken into three categories. The first category is the nurse’s ethical responsibilities to her patient which is provisions one through three. Second is the nurse’s obligation to herself, provisions four through six. The third ethical requirement for nurses is related to their relationship to the nursing profession, community, nation, and world overall. This focus is summarized in provisions seven through nine [ (American Nurses Association, 2013) ].
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
A variety of texts and articles over the past few years have argued for the use of an alternative approach to teaching organizational behavior, one that emphasizes experiential learning. This approach "emphasizes an existential, emergent view for learning organizational behavior" (McMullen, 1979), where the role of the instructor is that of learning facilitator, responsible for designing experiences for students to base learning upon, rather than as teacher, responsible for lecturing on theory and concepts. While gaining wide acceptance, this approach has nevertheless created problems in the assessment of students' performance. Significant learnings in this model of teaching occur not only
`Ethics' is defined as ."..the basis on which people...decide that certain actions are right or wrong and whether one ought to do something or has a right to something"(Rumbold, 1986). In relating `ethics' to nursing care, "Nursing decisions affect people... nurses have the power to good or harm to their patients" (Bandman et al, 2002). In this essay, the author will also identify the most important ethical principles and concepts of Evan's case, will outline the different stages of one's approach to ethical decision-making by utilising the "DECIDE Model for Ethical Decision-Making" founded by Thompson et al (2000) and will make a decision on the best course of action to take as a nurse in this
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).