Ethics for Nursing and all of us
When I went to nursing school in 1981 ethics was not a separate course. It was not mentioned specifically at all. As I worked I heard of an ethics officer but I did not consider this person to be someone I needed to spend time much time with. We were taught to "do the right thing" and we assumed it was what we had been taught at home, in school or with our group. We did not consider that what one considered correct would be what another correct. The collective "we" ruled the world. We were culturally and morally closed. It did not seem wrong to those in "charge" but those on the other end may still see it differently.
We need to remember that some of those that remember the world that way are still living. We need more then an ethic's officerer; we need ethics committees now. Life and health care have many opportunities for ethical issues requiring thought and consideration for all people involved.
Presently there are many more ethical issues than when I graduated from nursing school. It seems that technology has allowed people to survive when they would not have 35 years ago. What kind of ethical dilemmas are you facing where you work?
ReplyDeleteNurse educator,
DeleteI have personally been through procedures that saved my son's physical life but he demonstrates no mental or social life.
We have families keeping members alive so that their check will keep coming. The person is elderly and confused at times, so they do not make their own choices any more. Performing treatmetns such as dialysis on a person who does not want it but having no choice as the family is the decision maker is an ethical delimma to me.
My mother was encouraged to go on dialysis at age 80
Deletewhen she was not a candidate for a transplant. She did
have about 1 1/2 years which I am very grateful for.
However, she really suffered at the end of her life.
I have wondered what the ethics are of keeping a person
alive on dialysis when they have no prospects of a
transplant. What do you think?
Nurse Educator,
DeleteDialysis is a life saving treatment. Many people know that their kidneys are failing before it happens but some do not and go to the hospital and come out on dialyis. Many people do not want to deal with advaced directives and when something like this comes up the decision has to be made during an emotional time. As noted at the American Kidney fund most patients live five to six years after starting dialysis. I had a patient who had been on treatment for 25 years. As with other aspects of a persons life this should be up to the patient. Unfortunately, the family can be the ones deciding even if the person is crying and trying to end the treatments. Being considered for transplant or not is not a reason to choose or not choose transplant.
Nurse educator,
ReplyDeleteEthics is something that has changed from the time I started in nursing school and beyond. With the more complex care that is given to our patients and the technology that keeps them alive, we as nurses are faced with difficult decisions. And these decisions are not just located in the hospitals or longterm situations. There is also ethical issues within the walls of academia. How often we push students through that by our knowlege and judgement are not good nurses, and we feel troubled by allowing the students to go forward because the Campus president wants you not to fail them? Ethical issues are not as simple as they once were.
In dealing with ethical and moral dilemmas, Butts & Rich (2010) believe that nurses in the clinical areas are the healthcare professionals who are most likely to get involved with patients and families, and most often are the ones who report the ethical situations that occur. An ethical and moral issue in academia is not as widespread as those in the clinical setting, because many of the educators would only verbalize their concerns to each other or to other nurses in the same area of the profession. Upon discussing ethical and moral issues that occur in the academic nursing programs, many of the nurse educators expressed how they agonized between their duty to protect the public and their wish to facilitate students, with whom they have built relationships to succeed(Stokes, 2007). Ethical dilemmas are on the rise in more ways than what we even think.
Judi
References
Butts, J. & Rich, K. L. (2008). Nursing ethics across the curriculum and into practice (2nd ed.). Sudbury, Massachusetts: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, LLC.
Stokes, G. (2007). Different voices in nurse education. Educational Philosophy and Theory,39(5).1469-1512.