Ethical issues arise in clinical practice on a daily basis. Nurses and other healthcare practitioners face a lot of dilemmas that are ethically determined or driven. Ethical behaviors among nurses are determined by various factors; this is the reason why what is considered ethical in one society could be unethical in another society. Working in an emergency department lead to increase in ethical issues. Ethical issues in nursing are exacerbated by lack of information, high incidence of cognitive abilities, and time constraint (Ulrich et al, 2010). One of the ethical issue that I have seen arise in a clinical practice is patients making their decisions regarding their health condition. For example, an elderly person chooses to walk alone without the support of a nurse, and this exposes him to a great risk of harming himself. This is an ethical issue that puts a nurse into dilemma on whether to allow the patient make his decisions or not.
The nurse manager should have handles the issue in various ways. One of the main considerations is that the patient has the right to make decisions and practice independence, but the risk of the patient is causing injury (Guido, 2013). The nurse manager will handle the situation by ensuring that the patient fully understands the risk he is exposing himself into due to refusal of care. Ethically the patient has the right to refuse care, but this is irrational. The nurse manager should handle the situation by educating the patients on the situation and ensures that the patient make an informed decision.
Advancement of technology is one of the major developing in the field of nursing. In order to avoid such ethical dilemma, patients should be provided with other modern facilities that could eliminate the support from the nurse (Kangasniemi et al, 2013). This should help the patients to walk around using modern walking facilities. On the same note, the patients should be educated on decision making process regardless of their medical condition. Caregivers, patients and nurses, need to undergo tremendous education on decision making process. This will reduce the tension between patient and nurse.
References
Guido, G. W. (2013). Legal and ethical issues in nursing. London: Wiley
Kangasniemi, M., Vaismoradi, M., Jasper, M., & Turunen, H. (2013). Ethical issues in patient safety: Implications for nursing management. Nursing Ethics, 20(8), 904-916. doi:10.1177/0969733013484488
Ulrich, C. M., Taylor, C., Soeken, K., O'Donnell, P., Farrar, A., Danis, M., & Grady, C. (2010). Everyday ethics: ethical issues and stress in nursing practice. Journal Of Advanced Nursing, 66(11), 2510-2519. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05425.x
