When you’re a nurse, every shift presents the possibility that an ethical dilemma will emerge. And these dilemmas run the gamut from whether a patient has been invited to participate in their own treatment plan to whether an end-of-life care plan respects a patient’s spirituality or personal preferences.
Now, there’s an award that acknowledges and celebrates nurses who demonstrate solid ethical practice.
What’s in the code?
The American Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics is more than just a guide for ethical practice and the obligations and duties of nurses. It’s akin to a promise that nurses make to every single patient they care for to look out for their best interests.
“The Code of Ethics helps nurses by giving them structure as to how to own their accountability and their responsibilities within their nursing practice and help make those decisions based on what would be providing the most optimal care for the patient,” said Emily Emma, DNP, RN-BC, NEA-BC, the director for Magnet and professional practice at Stony Brook (N.Y.) University Hospital, said in a Nurse.com blog. “Having ethical principles in nursing really guides the nurse to make the best, most moral decision on behalf of themselves as practitioners and for the patients.”
The Code of Ethics’ provisions counsels nurses to practice with “compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person,” to be advocates for patient rights and safety, and points out that nurses’ “primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population.”
The provisions also acknowledge that nurses owe “the same duties to self as to others” and should prioritize maintaining an ethical work environment.
To non-nurses, this may seem like a tall order, but nurses make this commitment even before they land their first nursing jobs. Yet, that commitment is not without its challenges.
Types of challenges to ethics in nursing
Research has shown that many ethical challenges revolve around situations that compromise patient care, safety, and morally distressing end-of-life decisions. Common ethical issues discussed in research and news reports include:
- Safeguarding patients’ rights
- Informed consent to treatment
- Shared decision making
- Breaches in patient confidentiality or privacy
- End-of-life decisions
- Organ donation and transplantation
A study on the Sage Journals website characterized ethical dilemmas into three themes:
- Balancing harm and care
- Work overload affecting quality
- Navigating in disagreement
The study’s authors wrote, “Moral decisions are based on nurses’ ethical awareness and involve a complex process of observing, analyzing, and weighing up the possible consequences of a choice where nurses are driven by the ideal of care and the aim of ‘doing good.’ For nurses, doing good means considering the patient’s well-being, quality of care, and the patient’s dignity. In other words, the patient’s lifeworld is taken into account.” When there is an obstacle to doing good is when the ethical dilemma arises.
The “balancing harm and care theme” addresses instances wherein nurses are forced to act against what they consider to be good and appropriate care, which is distressing to nurses, according to the study. The “work overload affecting quality” theme …read more
Read full article here: nurse.com