Leukemia Ethical Dilemma Case Study

Treatment of Leukemia: A Moral Dilemma
Jordin L. Rubingh
Grand Valley State University

Treatment of Leukemia: A Moral Dilemma While a career in nursing is often fulfilling, it doesn’t come without challenges. Regardless of their area of practice, nurses face a variety of ethical dilemmas every day. Burkhardt and Nathaniel (2014) define an ethical dilemma as a problem that requires a choice between two conflicting moral claims. An example of this is when pediatric nurses are caring for terminally ill adolescents who want to stop treatment for their illnesses, but their parents do not. One scenario about a boy named Mike is a perfect example of this type of ethical dilemma. Mike is a fifteen-year-old boy who was diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia at the age of seven. He had successfully received chemotherapy and radiation, putting him into remission until two years ago, when he relapsed. At this time, Mike received another round of radiation and chemotherapy, but it was

The authorative figures in my life have taught me that I may not always agree with, or understand, why people make the decisions that they do. Regardless, you need to respect other people’s actions and opinions. The first time that I realized just how important respect was to me, was when a student in the grade above me died of suicide. Fellow students started posting things on social media, talking about how the boy had no right to take his own life, and how he could have done so many other things for help. Seeing these types of posts, I grew infuriated. How could these people ever understand what this boy had been going through? They had not lived the life that he had lived. It was in this moment that I realized just how important it was to take a step back, to think about what may be going on in someone else’s life, and to consider and respect someone else’s thoughts before making judgements about