The Decision Of Withdrawal From Life Sustaining Treatment

There are a number of legal and ethical duties expected of nurses. Most of these involve care for patient’s autonomy and confidentiality despite the medical care. Failure to act regarding these can give rise to liability. One aspect of Patient’s autonomy involves giving or withholding his consent about treatment. This paper takes into account ‘consent’ as the aspect of law regarding nursing.

Healthcare professionals have an ethical obligation to respect patient’s wishes. Consequently, many legal and ethical dilemmas arise in healthcare in response to clinical decisions related to the needs, beliefs, and preferences of patients and families. Other dilemmas result over concerns about the integrity, competence, or actions of other healthcare professionals. Preserving human dignity, relieving suffering, equality, integrity, and accountability are essential nursing values (Kangasniemi, Pakkanen, & Korhonen, 2015). Nurse leaders have an

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).

ISSUES: Is it legal or/and ethical to withdraw life-sustaining medical treatments from terminally ill adult patient?

Ethical dilemma may also arise in cases where a patient may feel their right to DNR should be carried out when giving direct order. The DNR process, however, is required to be documented by a physician. Andrew Putnam (2003) presents a case where an eighty-eight year old patient’s code status was DNR; “However, the patient has never signed formal advance directive statement or assigned durable power of attorney for her health care to anyone.” (Putnam, 2003, 2025) Ethics can be simply stated as doing the right thing (Roberts, 2002, 242); but in this case ethics is questioned because the physician was faced with the decision to carry out the wishes of the patient or to make a decision based on legality. In this case, it may have been morally right to carry out the wishes of the patient who wanted DNR orders carried out, but it may have been the right choice to do the legal thing and not carried out due to lack of signed documentation.

The study of ethics and legal issues are relevant to nursing management because this profession is about healthcare which we need to provide carefully and correctly to people. Yoder-Wiser describes ethics to be what one feels inclined to do based on one’s conscience as opposed to what company protocols and policies say one must do (Yoder-Wiser, 2015). If we don’t have a proper study of the ethical and legal issues, it may lead to a critical problem that will affect not only the profession but the healthcare industry as a whole. Studying ethics will allow nurses the knowledge and understanding on how we can provide quality healthcare to our patients. In addition,

This case study is based on a 19 years old patient who was in a stage of dying with a terminal cancer of leukemia. Juan Perez was 16 years old when he was diagnosed with leukemia. Despite of all the treatment, Juan condition was worsening. At the age of 19, Juan become much sicker and reached the end stage of the disease. However, Juan was fully aware of his condition and deemed competent. Because of the patient condition despite of his age, the patient mother and the patient primary care physician had prohibited all the healthcare professional include the advanced practice nursing (ANP) to reveal any information to this patient without the mother’s consent. The prohibition of revealing the information to the patient was an assumption of the

T., & Johnstone, M.-J. (2008). Ethics in nursing practice: a guide to ethical decision making (3rd ed). Chichester, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell.

Medical professionals are frequently confronted to make ethical decisions about life and death matters when giving aid to individuals and families. Ethical decisions need to be considered in a wider context than personal, professional and ethical principles. When making the decision, nurses and other health care providers should try to look from the viewpoint of the patient and the patient’s family by standing in their shoes. The author describes futile treatment as when there is 10% or below success rate for survival. Michael Li believes that the crucial decision of withdrawing or withholding treatment is not only up to the doctors, but should be deliberated with the patient and the family as early as possible so that they are able to contemplate

This essay aims to discuss the legal and ethical issues in nursing practice about gaining consent and why it is important.

The value placed on the autonomy, well-being, and social justice for all participants in health care interventions is biased towards the patient and family, sometimes to the detriment of health care providers who are obliged by professional ethical commitments to continue to provide care. The principles guiding ethical healthcare practices were birthed from a genuine need to protect people against harmful medical interventions and experimentation (the Belmont Report, 1978). The autonomy and authority of the patient or her substitute decision maker (SDM) is currently valued above other guiding principles central to nursing and biomedical ethics, namely beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice (Beauchamps & Childress, 2013; Canadian Nurses’ Association, 2008). The primacy of autonomy and patient or SDM choice is also reflected in recent legal precedents in Ontario (Cooper, Chidwick, & Sibbald, 2011). Whether such decisions are in fact an exercise in autonomy is debatable. The end result is an imbalanced provision of care, and subsequent moral distress for health care providers. Nurses are particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of participating in care they see as unethical for a number of reasons, including perceived futility of outcome, prolonged patient suffering, or the untoward results of decisions made based on unsound or

Along with the technological and medical advancements, there has been continual expansion in the role of the professional nurse. Florence Nightingale’s contributions during the 18th century helped pave the way for the identifying the patient’s needs as well as the role of the nurse in meeting those needs (author, 2015, p. # or para #). One identified need of the patient is to have someone who will advocate for them. As an advocate the nurse stands on the frontline for the patient and serves as a liaison between the patient and their family as well as health care providers. The nurse makes ethical decisions and respects the rights of the patient. (introduce the quote) “Nurses who prize their role in securing patient well being are sensitive to ethical and legal implications” (Taylor,

The nursing profession offers many rewards. Among those is being part of a team who has the opportunity to influence the health, welfare and well being of people each and every day. Nursing student go to nursing school with the intention of learning how to heal and help people live not to learn to help people die. The healthcare environment is changing. Part of that change is because the United States’ (US) population is aging at increasing rates. By 2030, one in five Americans

In this paper, I will discuss how the ethical principles of autonomy and informed consent, confidentiality, and beneficence and nonmaleficence are reflected in these three standards of practice I have chosen from the ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses.

The aim of this essay is to discuss the legal and ethical issues in nursing practice about gaining consent and why it is important.