The Cornerstone Of Nursing Practice

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

A nurse owes a duty to her profession's own code of ethics. Patient autonomy, justice, and respect for patients' dignity are central to nursing practice. The Canadian Nurses' Association (CNA), through the publication of the codes of ethics for nurses, calls upon nurses to

Professional values are the foundation for practice; they guide interactions with client, colleagues, other professionals, and the public, by providing the framework for commitment to the Welfare of others. They are also belief or ideas to which an individual is committed and which are reflected in patterns of behavior. Institute of medicine (2000). In this article, I will define Altruism, Autonomy, Human Dignity, Integrity, and Social Justice. I will also identify how these values are demonstrated in our every day lives by other nurses and myself. According to Dougherty (1992) “Altruism is a concern

The ANA Code of Ethics provides nine provisions to guide the ethical responsibilities of the nursing profession. Within those provisions certain professional traits stand out that define the qualities of a great nurse. The four professional traits from the ANA Code of Ethics that I would bring to an interdisciplinary team of healthcare professionals would be respect, compassion, commitment, and accountability. Respect is a major professional trait embodied mostly in the first provision of the Code of Ethics. The nurse should show respect for every individual whom the nurse interacts with including patients, families, and colleagues, for human needs and values, for human dignity, for patient decisions (American Nurses Association, 2001). I treat others as I would like to be treated myself, always with respect. Compassion runs side by side with respect and a nurse should always treat everyone with respect and compassion. One aspect of compassion mentioned in Provision 3.6 of the Code of Ethics guides the nurse in extending compassion to colleagues who are in recovery from illness or when illness interferes with job performance (American Nurses Association, 2001). This might be the case when a nurse encounters a co-worker whose practice may be impaired while on the job. The nurse should show

A nursing career and caring for the sick intertwine inseparably. It requires a tremendous amount of compassion and empathy to care for those who are in need. My philosophy of care is to treat others with dignity, respect and compassion regardless of their race, ethnicity or cultural background. It’s about treating people the way you want to be treated and to understand that sometimes the best medicine of all is kindness. In addition, not only is it important to provide effective and competent care to all patients, it’s extremely crucial to provide care that is genuine and compassionate. All health care consumers should be receiving care that reflects their values and beliefs.

Within the practice of nursing, situations often arise where nurses are forced to make decisions regardless of their level of experience in the profession. Providing care and following the physician’s orders historically were the nurse’s sole responsibilities. However, social change, changes in health care finances, increasing international perspectives, and demographic population changes, have resulted in a significant evolution of the roles and responsibilities emplaced on today’s nurses (The National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (NACNS), 2007). Kelly and Crawford (2013) believe budget cuts, higher client acuity and clients with complex needs, mergers of hospital corporations as well as a general shortage of qualified nurses has made it necessary for nurses to play a role in decision making. Decision making is defined as “cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among alternatives” (Kelly & Crawford, 2013, p. 352).

Ethics and values play a major role in nursing professionalism. Nursing professionalism is the way that nurses interact with other professionals and apply knowledge from the basic principles of nursing to better care for their patients. The professional values of nursing include altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice (“Essentials,” 2008). These values provide guidelines that accurately describe a compassionate and ethical nurse. One of the values that relates to me as well as my future professional nursing role is human dignity. Protecting human dignity means that the nursing professional will respect all individuals or communities they are working with and show them that they are important and are being cared for (“Essentials,” 2008).

First is the principal of beneficence which “requires nurses to act in ways that benefit patients” (Burkhardt, 2014, p.69). This principle tells us that one should promote good, prevent harm and remove evil or harm.

Professional values guide the decisions and actions we make in our careers. As nurses we are responsible for caring for patients during birth, death, illness and healing. If we are not aware of the decisions and actions to take it would be impossible to provide our patients with exceptional care. The values that are the foundation of the nursing profession are altruism, autonomy, human dignity, and social justice. In this paper I will define each value and describe their impact on nurses and nursing students.

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

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

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).

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).

Altruism is the act of helping, serving and living for others to remove disparities at the sacrifice of one’s own self-interest. In context of medicine, altruism is practicing medicine unselfishly with high regard for the patients. It is the social contract of physicians with the patients that is as a principal of action and essence of professionalism, putting patients’ welfare and autonomy first and placing them within greater commitment to social justice.

Theory is a cluster of concept or ideas that propose a view concerning a phenomenon to guide nursing practice (Chitty, 2005). The four concepts basic to nursing that are incorporated in this paper are nursing, person, health, and environment (Cherry & Jacob, 2005). The goal of this paper is to describe the core concept of nursing shared amongst Dorothea Orem and Virginia Henderson’s theories. The comparison and analysis of concept definitions between these two theories will also examined. Finally Henderson’s theory of concept statement, metaparadigm and her philosophy will be explored.