Ethical Nursing Practice Analysis

You started your first job at a large hospital. You are assigned a patient to treat who no one wants to work with because the patient always says “NO”. The Occupational Therapy team leader tells you that you need to treat the patient because the doctor is angry that the patient has not been receiving therapy. You are told that the patient’s nurse has called to complain to the therapy department about the fact that the patient has not been receiving therapy

Every day nurses are faced with ethical dilemmas. Challenges in these situations are becoming more and more complex due to increasing workload and sicker patients. When a nursing unit is understaffed not only are nurses more likely to become burnt out, but their patients are far less likely to receive the quality of care they deserve. The problem is that the Federal regulations require hospitals who participate in Medicare to “have ‘adequate’ numbers of licensed nurses (RN, LPN, CNA) to provide care to all patients as needed,” but the regulations

According to the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, nurses are expected to provide a safe, effective and ethical care to their patients in accordance with the guidelines of the Standards for Practice for Nurses and Midwives (Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct,1999).

Patient-centered care places the patient “as the source of control and full partner in providing compassionate and coordinated care based on respect for patient’s preferences, values, and needs.” (QSEN, 2012) Too often healthcare professionals look at the patient as only a medical problem, not as an individual person. In a 2013 publication, Chen and Snyder noted the traditional disease-focused model is changing to one where care is customized to each individual person. There are six dimensions of patient-centered care, including the previously mentioned definition to include: comfort, coordination and integration of care, free flow of information, spiritual awareness and involvement of family and friends (Drenkard, 2013). These dimensions show the importance of patient-centered care. Patient-centered care forces the providers, nurses included, to look at each patient as an individual person; not every patient diagnosed with pneumonia is the same, each has different values and cultures that must be treated exclusively. Ensuring a patient can access a chaplain or Bible is providing patient-centered care; treating a partner in a same-sex relationship the same as heterosexual partners is providing patient-centered care. This is the future of reigning in an out of control health care

Malpractice is negligence, offense, or breach of duty by a professional individual that causes a patient to be injured. Much of the time, it includes when a nurse did not meet a standard of care or to deliver care that he or she should deliver in a similar situation. According to Standards of Practices “Standard 2: Responsibility and Accountability”, the nurses have to maintain, practice, respect and promote patient’s autonomy, as well as to provide care in a responsible and accountable manner. However, keeping the truth from a patient will not enable them to come to terms with their condition and give them the alternative for further treatment. Hence, it would be better to tell the patient the truth to guarantee that the nurse will not face any lawful issues unless the patient has a lack of decision-making capacity which could be caused by mental illnesses, such as dementia or being

The American Nurses Association believes that respect for the inherent dignity, worth, unique attributes, and human rights of all individuals are a fundamental principle (ANA 2015). ANA establish nursing philosophy that guides our practice and set standards that nurse can follow and integrate into their practice. I believe nursing is a caring profession and the nurse plays a substantial role in providing quality care that empowers the patient to meet their goals, educate the patient about their disease, and support patient decision of expressing their autonomy. I will be discussion my nursing philosophy, which I fee is the core characters of being a nurse. The following are my personal nursing beliefs/values: compassionate/caring, fairness and honesty, advocacy, autonomy, knowledge.

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.

Every nursing, in order to consider the profession must have an understanding of at least three of the five professional values, in my opinion. These values consist of altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity and social justice (Taylor 96). Beginning with the professional value of Altruism, the believe in or practice and self concern for the well-being of others (96). I believe that in order to be the best nurse you can be for your patients, you must understand the concept of altruism. As a nurse, your profession is to take care of people, if you do not know the professional value of altruism than you cannot possibly understand how important it is to care about the wellbeing of your patient. Not only do you need to focus on the wellbeing of your patient, but the patient

The six tenets of ethical principles of nursing practice, help incorporate the four principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice (Robichaux, 2017). It is unknown how many patients Anna's nurse is currently caring for, other than knowing it is a busy night in the ER. The nurses' position is highly respected by Australian society, hence, the power paradigm should be acknowledged by the nursing individual, and used to incorporate the four principles of nursing practice, to engage the patient in the nursing process (Butts & Rich, 2016, p. 98); this encourages a therapeutic relationship where trust is

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

From time to time, social work practitioners face different challenges and one of such example is being confronted with ethical dilemmas. An ethical dilemma is defined as “when the social worker sees himself or herself as facing a choice between two equally unwelcoming alternatives, which may involve a conflict of moral values, and it is not clear which choice will be the right one” (Banks, 2012). Ethical dilemmas can occur in the context of either client or organisational-related conflict situations at work.

Amidst a whirlwind of change, nurses continue their roles as competent, honorable professionals. A relatively new issue, cultural integrity, correlates with the Code regarding “treatment of the human response.” The American Nurses Association’s “Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements”, also called the Code, highlights nurses’ consensus on professional principles. Nursing ethics guide how practitioners treat their patients and peers. Sensitivity to individual societal, familial and cultural background plays an important role in organizational integrity. By observing the following six practices, nursing professionals make life choices that promote individual and societal wellbeing.

Duty of care plays a major role for health professionals, Duty of care follows codes and principles put into action for facilities such as hospitals via external sources such as the Government, in order achieve one core goal which is to ensure that the patient is subject to the best possible care that can be given by the facility and the Health Professionals working at the health facility.

Veracity, or truth telling, “engenders respect, open communication, trust, and shared responsibility. It is promoted in all professional codes of nursing ethics” (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014, p. 73). In order to effectively illustrate veracity in the workplace, a nurse must openly communicate with their patient, deleting any barriers that exist. In the case study, Jackson assumed that her patient abused pain medication, which prompted her to offer a placebo in its place. Upholding the nursing ethics, I agree with you that the nurse obtains an obligation to speak the truth, when questioned on procedures, treatments, and diagnoses. According to the ANA Code of Ethics (American Nurses Association, 2015, p. 2), provision

Providing care to a patient is a particularly challenging process that requires a great deal of effort from a nurse. A nurse’s ability to give quality care to their patient is an important aspect to a patient’s life both now and in the future. As such, nurses must exhibit specific qualities in their practice in order to maintain the best standard of care for their patients. Given this, I believe that the standards of knowledge, advocacy, and self-awareness are foundational to the nursing practice and to a nurse’s capacity to provide quality patient care.