The Nursing Dilemma
Nursing is an activity that involves dealing with another person’s life and it is therefore important that a lot of ethics are integrated in the practice. These ethics normally act as guidelines for the nurses and they are meant to enhance the nurse’s efficiency. As a result of the new technological and infrastructural development, there has been a need to set up new models for care provision .The nurses are therefore expected to adapt to these advancements and be able to adopt the new ethical principles that come with them.
These new ethical principles include beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, autonomy, veracity and confidentiality. Nonmaleficence principle means that the nurse has a role to protect his or her patient. This principle therefore demands that the nurse cause no harm to his or her patient. The nurse can harm the patient by refusing to take his call; such an action can result into an emotional distress. Other means through which the nurse can harm the patient include a failure by the nurse to give the patient the accurate information or breaking down equipments meant for the patients (Ludwick and Silva, 1999). It is therefore important that the communication system is made efficient and reliable and if possible a backup provided incase of a failure. It is also important that even the machines are assessed so as to ensure that it does not harm the patient.
Beneficence principles raise the question on as to who between the nurse and the patient has the right to make the decision concerning the health care service that is best for the patient. At times, there is a misunderstanding over what is good between the patient and the nurse, the patient and the organizations, between the patients themselves or between the states that allow interstate practice in care provision (Ludwick and Silva 1999), this is because there is always the battle on as to what is good for each of the parties involved. This ethical principle therefore raises the question about the need to allow the patient to make his or her own independent decision concerning treatment; this also leaves a lot of issues to be raised about who should make the decision in a situation where the patient has a malfunctioning of the brain or if he or she is in a critical condition.
Autonomy means that the individual has the right to make her own independent decision without any interference from others (Ludwick and Silva, 1999). This principle raises the ethical questions concerning the response of the nurses who practice in the states they are allowed autonomy to the withdrawal of that autonomy or vice versa. This also explains if the nurses have thee right to refuse making the independent decisions if they feel less prepared to make such autonomous decisions and if the patients have the right to refuse being given care. The society has also allowed the nurses the power to make autonomous decisions, the question is therefore that, “will the nurses be able to return the favor by increasing their commitment to the society, if the nurses will develop respect to each others autonomy and if this will increase the understanding between the nurses and in the society that they work for” (Ludwick and Silva, 1999).
Justice refers to the equitable distribution of the resources. In health care, it means that the nurse is able to provide for the patients, the kind of care that they know is available for them. Justice in this case is experienced in the availability of enough nurses and finances; Justice raises the issues concerning how to share the services of the few available nurses amongst the many people, it also raises the issue concerning the payment given to the nurses, that is if it is worth it that the nurses work for longer hours and travel to longer distances at no extra pay. One m ay also wonder if it is just to deny patients health care services due to the scarcity of nurses or is it just to have the nurses overworked so as to meet the high demands at no extra pay (Ludwick and Silva 1999).
Confidentiality as an ethical principle implies that the nurse is not allowed to share the information about the patient with any one else unless there is a fact that he or she wants elaborated. The National Council for state boards has developed centralized data base (NURSYS) which contain confidential information about each of the nurses; such information if exposed to the wrong persons may cause some damage to the nurse’s name or reputation. The patients too need confidentiality when dealing with the health providers, this is so because some of them have highly risky diseases that can result in the patients being stigmatized, it is therefore important that the nurse keeps the patients secrets carefully so as to prevent the patients from deciding to stop talking providers as this may put their lives in danger (Grundstein- Amado, n.d).
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