Ethical Dilemma In Nursing: Causes, Consequences, And Essay Solutions.

Lack of Care and Responsibility

Question:

Discuss about the Common Good Critical Analysis.

Common good is the sum of total condition, which allows people to reach at the fulfilment more fully and more easily. Nursing is one of the major contributors in the health care sector. This article will analyze the relationship between the nursing practice and the common goods of this profession. There are some major challenges for integrating the common goods of Nursing. The concept of common good may have the utility in moral and ethical issues affecting care of vulnerable patient groups. According to Atkins, (2014) Nursing has been recognized as the part of promoting common good within the society. This discrete profession reflects on the societal recognition, which supports the common good of the society either locally or globally. Moreover, Wilkinson, (2014) opined that nursing has addressed the need of balancing the individual dignity as well as respect for social integrity. However, the challenge of realising aspiration of common good in Nursing is reflected on the ethical misconduct in clinical centre and healthcare delivery system.

In the recent time, ethical dilemma has become the major issues with the profession of Nursing. Most of the time, Nurses are not being so much caring about the patients. Moreover, Iacobucci et al., (2013) pointed out that the nurses are not keeping much control over the vulnerable patients. The patients are getting more freedom with the loose control of the nurses. Furthermore, the patients often make their own choice of eating and other activities, which can severely harm the patients. Therefore, lack of care of nurses is really causing ethical dilemma in the health care sector. Apart from that, Burston and Tuckett, (2013) opined that the nurses often show lack of responsibility for preventing a patient towards doing an unethical activity. For example, with own set of unethical value and beliefs, the nurses often do not oppose a patient’s decision toward doing abortion. Therefore, in this way, the nurses are actually supporting unethical activities of the society either locally or globally.

Having high level of casualty and lack of professionalism, the nurses often do not maintain honesty in their profession. Moreover, Oh and Gastmans, (2015) stated the nurses often shares some health related information with the vulnerable patients, which can causes emotional distress for those patients. Despite of the instruction of the patients’ family, nurses often share such kind of information with the critical patients, which can lead to severe emotional distress for the patients. Therefore, such activity is highly related to ethical dilemma in a professional place.  As per Cerit and Dinç, (2013), the maintenance cost of the patients is highly expensive, which they are in medical futile. In such situation, the nurses should draw the line and redirect the medial resources, which can save the life of the critical patients. However, the nurses often fail to deal with the personal situation of the patients, which may cause harm to the patients.  It is also harming the hope of patients’ family towards saving the life of their patients. In this way, there is also arising the ethical issue and challenge for the nurses.

According to Iacobucci et al., (2013) Ethical dilemma is also causes between the empirical studies of clinical research and personal beliefs gained from any religious beliefs. For example, sometimes, patients desperately need transfusion after admitting in the hospital. However, in some religious beliefs, transfusion is highly unacceptable. Therefore, in such situation, the patients have to take decision based on empirical studies of clinical research and not on religious beliefs. However, the patients often make wrong choice in such situation, which can cases harm to the patients. In this way, nurses causes ethical dilemma in their own profession. Apart from that, Oh and Gastmans, (2015) pointed out that the nurses often do not maintain the privacy in their professional fields. Nurses are responsible for protecting the best interest of the patient and balancing the interest against the wishes, beliefs and values of the patients’ family.

Ethical dilemma has become the integral part of every nurse within the clinical centres. It actually has several major and minor harms to the patients. Therefore, the clinical centres should immediately take some measures for stopping the ethical dilemmas of the nurses. The nurses should get enough training for better medical resource management and understand the feelings of the patients towards a common good in their profession. Moreover, ongoing education should be provided to the nurses by involving ethical experts in the clinical centres. Apart from that, the hospital and clinical centre should frame proper code of ethics for the nurses towards guiding them for ethical behaviour with the patients. Furthermore, the workplace environment of the nurses should be flexible enough, where they can share their issues with dealing with vulnerable patients. It can help in better treatment of those patients with compromising with the professional ethics.

References

Atkins, R. (2014). Instruments measuring perceived racism/racial discrimination: Review and critique of factor analytic techniques. International Journal of Health Services, 44(4), 711-734.

Burston, A. S., & Tuckett, A. G. (2013). Moral distress in nursing: contributing factors, outcomes and interventions. Nursing Ethics, 20(3), 312-324.

Cerit, B., & Dinç, L. (2013). Ethical decision-making and professional behaviour among nurses: a correlational study. Nursing ethics, 20(2), 200-212.

Iacobucci, T. A., Daly, B. J., Lindell, D., & Griffin, M. Q. (2013). Professional values, self-esteem, and ethical confidence of baccalaureate nursing students. Nursing ethics, 20(4), 479-490.

Oh, Y., & Gastmans, C. (2015). Moral distress experienced by nurses: a quantitative literature review. Nursing ethics, 22(1), 15-31.

Wilkinson, L. (2014, July). A Longitudinal Examination of the Intersections of Ethnicity and Sex and Their Influence on Perceived Racism Among Newcomer Youth in Canada. In XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 13-19, 2014). Isaconf.