The Role Of Ethical Dilemmas In Nursing Practice

A nurse is only truly competent if he or she can knowingly handle patients whose entire value system is different from his or her own but still manages to establish and maintain a therapeutic relationship that paves way for effective implementation of nursing actions. The delivery of care by the nurse who looks at the world through his or her own limited set of values can compromise the quality of care delivery for patients from other cultures. Being culturally sensitive allow nurses to recognize own biases and assumptions against a specific cultural. Challenges for Nurse Leaders In order to be competent as a health care professional, one must be able to deliver care accordingly for a patient’s culture.

Ethical dilemmas, also known as a moral dilemma, is a situation in which there is a choice between two options, neither of which resolves the situation completely. In other words, both options will result in negative results based on society and/or personal guidelines. Labor and delivery nurses are often confronted with ethical dilemmas in practice. To help student nurses prepare for this eventuality, nursing programs do their best to incorporate education about ethics and professionalism into courses. This introduction to ethics in nursing school also assists future nurses to begin recognizing and managing their own personal values in a way that can help guide them in resolving ethical conflicts they will encounter throughout their professional careers.

Provision one, a provision in the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses, entails that nurses should pursue their nursing career with empathy and respect towards all patients. In other words, patients should be viewed as separate individuals with separate values and beliefs. Nurses and other healthcare professionals should respect their individual decisions, whether they agree with them or not. This code of ethics provision relates to the ethical dilemma of a patient refusing medical treatment. Although nurses are trained to do all that they are capable of doing to save patients’ lives, sometimes nurses reach a dilemma that puts a strain on their practice. At times, patients’ refuse medical treatment, even if the treatment will

Ethical differences can occur because of individual perseption of a subject or event (Legal dictionary, 2017). The ethical difference even may be political or religious in nature (Legal dictionary, 2017). Legal reasoning helps people to distinguish between what is right within society compared to what they think they should do. In this case, the moral reasoning is to end the patients suffering and to allow the resident to die is the kinder option (Moore, 2017). The legal reasoning in this case would be to honor the families wishes with the exception that the decision for life saving treatments was made in a malicious manner (Moore,

Utilitarianism and Deontology are two major ethical theories that influence nursing practice. Utilitarian principles of promoting the greatest good for the greatest amount of people parallels the nursing tenet of beneficence. Deontological principles of treating individuals with dignity, and promoting the well-being of the individual parallels the nursing tenet of non-maleficence. Utilitarian and Deontological principles can be utilized to resolve ethical dilemmas that arise in the nursing profession. The purpose of this paper is to define utilitarianism and deontology, discuss the similarities and differences between the two, and to address an ethical dilemma utilizing utilitarian and deontological principles.

This assignment is a reflection of ethical dilemmas in nursing practice as a registered nurse; this paper is based on the group assignment which was completed for NURS3004. This reflection will include an explanation of the role that I portrayed in the group, the preparation that I did for the role, what could have been done differently, how this group assignment has impacted me in terms of working in a team and finally explain how this assignment will assist me in my future clinical practice as a newly registered nurse.

Nurses are faced with ethical dilemmas related to clinical issues, and disease and treatment decisions daily (Kangasniemi,

You did a great job. You are acting as an advocate for the patient for their interest. We must support the rights of patients who are unable to advocate for themselves .We are facing lot of ethical problems in our workplace. Nurses must take a decision in Ethical dilemmas. These decisions affected by so many factors, including principles learned in school and nurses personal beliefs, and values. It is important that all healthcare professionals value and support their peers who have the courage to stand up and speak out against unethical behavior even when others are silent or differ in opinion. Ethical dilemmas in practice arise when one feels drawn both to do and not to do the same thing.

Military Nurse’s Dilemma Chi Tiet University of Michigan - Flint Nurses are a group of professionals who faces a variety of ethical dilemmas while working. Therefore, these dilemmas cannot only impact on their personalities but also affect their patients. However, ethical dilemmas are argumentative and difficult to deal with, so there is no “right” or “wrong” answer for them. In a military nurse’s dilemma, a military RN is ordered to force feeding a terrorist prisoner while he is undergoing interrogation, and the prisoner is on a hunger strike protesting. The nurse is torn, but fearing of reprisal if orders are disobeyed, so the nurse is appalled at the over-riding a patient’s wish by force feeding him agains his wish.

Because of the valuable outcomes in resolving ethical issues in end-of-life care, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of health care organizations requires the health care facilities to establish ethics committee (Derse,

To begin, the journal article is broken up into three sections. The first section, conceptual framework, gives the foundation on how to become more culturally competent. The second section, cultural skill, explains how to understand patients of different culture. Finally, the last section, cultural encounters, brings all the information that is explained in the two sections into practice. In the first section, a model depicts how important it is for a nurse to become culturally competent rather than be culturally competent.

American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics with Interpretive Statements, provision 1 states, “the nurse, in all professional relationships, practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and uniqueness of every individual, unrestricted by consideration of social or economic status, personal attributes, or the nature of health problems” "(About Code of Ethics," 2017). In order to provide quality care to the homeless population, the community health nurse is challenged to put aside her own preconceived opinions about drug addiction, alcohol abuse, mental illness and the assumed unwillingness to care for oneself. “While trying to help clients negotiate ‘the system’ the professionals may face a client’s noncompliance with medical regimes, drug abuse, and even stealing or selling medical resources” (Hunter, 1993, p. 139).

Cultural education and awareness are key factors in providing respectful care to our patients. Being aware of differences in forms of communication, beliefs about life and death, and being able to accept and show respect for traditions that may not be our own will all come through continuing our education as nurses. We must remain vigilant to our patients and their families, noticing just how giving of ourselves and our time we are. With a Native American family, tone and body language can completely override the words that are spoken. The nurse who is attempting to provide respectful, culturally competent care will have to take the extra time, to develop the trust and respect that are so integral to their culture.

It is nearly impossible for the patient to rely on another person to make the best decision that they would have made for themselves, particularly when it involves personal interests such as profiting from a will. If there is something to gain, the family members’ motives seem questionable. If the patient falls ill, then there lies a possibility that their heirs will hope for the patient’s death so that they could receive their inheritance. The inability to confirm whether the family actually has the patient’s best interest in mind supports the argument that any form of euthanasia is unethical. Moreover, health care costs for terminally ill patients, including nursing homes, prescription drugs, and home health care deserves consideration.

There are populations such as the poor, elderly and minorities that can be taking advantage of and not informed of other options for their life. Vicki D. Lachman writes an article entitled; Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking: An Ethical Alternative to Physician- Assisted Suicide. The author talks about the need to assist dying patients by taking a deeper look into palliative care and providing the patient with the necessities and information about withholding treatment that can save their lives (Lachman, 2015, p. 56). The author of the article expressed her concerns that nurses can play a role in providing patients with the knowledge about voluntary stopping of eating and drinking due to the fact that nurses spend more time communicating with the patients and getting to know them in an intimate fashion (Lachman, 2015, p. 59).