Posted: August 31st, 2022

Ethical Analysis

Ethical Analysis
The decision-making process in health care can be quite complex. Any decision made can be detrimental to the patient’s health and can sometimes mean life or death. Nurse leaders are particularly crucial players in the decision-making process as most nurses and other professionals look up to them for appropriate and ethical decision-making. As such, a nurse manager’s ability to find an optimal solution is critical at all times.
An ethical issue in healthcare occurs when a decision regarding patient care needs to be made, but the available answers are not clear, and other options are not ideal from an ethical perspective. The ideal option could result in the declined quality of patient care, moral distress of the nurse, or legal implication of the professional involved. In simple terms, an ethical issue is when a nurse knows the right thing to do about a situation relating to patient care but not being to do it because of contradicting issues.
An Example of an ethical dilemma is in regards to honesty and withholding information from the patient. For instance, a patient may be critically ill with a terminal illness like cancer, and the family members may request the nurse not to disclose the information to the patient to protect their emotions. Deciding on such an issue can be particularly very complex. The nurse manager may be stuck between disclosing the information to the patient or withholding the same to protect them from the emotional breakdown.
However, according to the ANA code of ethics, the patient is entitled to receive complete information about their medical condition. Having full information helps them make informed consent or refuse treatment. ANA promotes telling the truth and advocates for honesty as a major factor driving the patient-nurse relationship.
From a nurse leader’s perspective, as much as they have to adhere to ANA codes of ethics, a situation like this can be quite challenging. Making the ultimate decision to share such sensitive information with the critical patient and particularly when faced with opposing family beliefs, can be scary. In this situation, a nursing leader can come up with other ways to approach the situation.
The most important thing should be never to lie to the patient regarding their medical condition. For instance, the nurse manager can opt to call in a trained professional to share the news or be with them as they share the unfortunate news. The nurse leader could also choose to make reasonable promises, such as promising to provide full information as soon as possible.
References
Feeg, V. D., Mancino, D. J., Rushton, C. H., Mendez, K. J. W., & Baierlein, J. (2021). Ethical Dilemmas for Nursing Students and Faculty: In Their Own Voices. Nursing education perspectives, 42(1), 29-35.
Pozgar, G. D. (2019). Legal and ethical issues for health professionals. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Rainer, J., Schneider, J. K., & Lorenz, R. A. (2018). Ethical dilemmas in nursing: An integrative review. Journal of clinical nursing, 27(19-20), 3446-3461.

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