Personal Ethics
Personal, cultural, and spiritual values contribute to your worldview and philosophy of nursing and their influence on my nursing practice
Nursing provides an opportunity to help other people who are in need or are sick. An individual’s dedication to work mainly depends on their level of passion. A dedicated individual can be committed to providing the best quality service. This then translates to performing duties ethically. Performing duties ethically ensures that the safety and life of a patient is not placed at risk due to negligence or incompetence. Being ethical also implies that duties are performed excellently even without the supervision of superiors.
Family values of cooperation are applied in nursing. The ability of family members to take care of one another when in need or during periods of illness also apply to nurses in the work environment. Being brought in such cultural values helps one to appreciate the need of patients to have someone to lean on when they have no one to make them feel better.
Trust is also another value that is significant in the nursing profession. Patients may confide in nurses during hard times, and it is the obligation of the nurse to be a confidant to ensure the patient does not succumb to emotional pain. According to Dinc and Gastmans (2013), trust is essential in healthcare as vulnerable patients may not be in a position to meet their own needs and thus rely on nurses. Trust ensures that professionalism in the nursing practice is achieved. Trust in the nursing profession ensures that there is a good working relationship among colleagues (Dinc and Gastmans, 2012).
Spirituality has an enormous influence on the nursing profession. Spiritual values such as compassion and empathy influence how a nurse relates with patient especially in an end of life situation. According to Wynne (2013), spiritual care involves personal interaction, intuition and intimacy with a patient at end of life situation. Meeting the patent’s emotional and spiritual needs increases patient satisfaction (Biro, 2012). The nurse patient relationship increases as the level of spiritual care increases.
Values in a nursing perspective relate to issues such as respect for human rights, right to life and treating people with respect (Snellman and Gedda, 2012). Thus, the values of nursing will affect both the social aspect and personal affecting a patient. In the nurse’s assessment of the value of a patient, it is not ethical to judge a patient by the social status or ability to pay for medical services. A nurse’s obligation is to attend to the patient with all the professionalism and to take into account that all patients have equal value with all other human beings.
Morality in nursing deals with personal and professional values a nurse needs to observe. For instance, honesty is a moral value that may be significant in addressing ethical challenges that may develop in the different nursing situations especially in emergency or end of life care. According to Gallagher (2011), nurses experience moral distress when they find it difficult to make a decision. For instance, moral distress occurs when patient is provided with inaccurate information concerning certain medical procedure.
Ethics relates to the influences of application of actions nurses use in the delivery of health services. According to Langelan and Sorlie (2011), nursing especially in emerging practice deals with many ethical situations. Physicians normally rely on nurses observations of the condition of the patient to assess the required treatment. Thus, such a situation may create emotional strain on the nurses. A nurse may make demands on themselves just to meet the patient’s expectations (Langelan and Sorlie, 2011). Such a situation produces an ethical challenge to the nurse if it contradicts a nurse’s personal and professional ethics.
Personal values create an ethical dilemma when nurses’ obligations to a patient contradict the patients’ expectations of a nurse or vice versa. In most cases, a nurse will be susceptible to agreeing with th patient’s expectations. This then proceeds in nurse compromising other personal values such as integrity and respect for the patient’s life.
Reflection
Ethical dilemmas encompass issues of racism, conflicting values and traditions. In the nursing practice, it is common for ethical dilemmas to arise in situations deciding who needs more care. This can be the case where there are very ill patients, requiring the use of a certain bed or ward. The situation escalates when one patient has more financial capacity to pay for certain services but does not need them. My personal views in such a scenario need to approach each scenario carefully. It is my duty to explain in the most understandable way for the patients to ensure lives that can be saved to be saved.
PASSION: Why am I here?To help patients to recover back to their full health to be with their families
MOTIVATION: What moves me to act?Seeing people unite with their loved ones
INSPIRATION: What keeps me in motion?
My spiritual values of compassion
LOYALTY: Whom do I serve?
Sick people in need of healthcare
References
Biro, A. L. (2012). Creating conditions for good nursing by attending to the spiritual. Journal Of Nursing Management, 20(8), 1002-1011.
Dinç, L., & Gastmans, C. (2012). Trust and trustworthiness in nursing: an argument-based literature review. Nursing Inquiry, 19(3), 223-237.
Dinç, L., & Gastmans, C. (2013). Trust in nurse–patient relationships: A literature review. Nursing Ethics, 20(5), 501-516.
Gallagher, A. (2011). Moral Distress and Moral Courage in Everyday Nursing Practice. Online Journal Of Issues In Nursing, 16(2), 1.
Langeland, K., & Sørlie, V. (2011). Ethical challenges in nursing emergency practice. Journal Of Clinical Nursing, 20(13/14), 2064-2070
Snellman, I., & Gedda, K. (2012). The value ground of nursing. Nursing Ethics, 19(6), 714-726
Wynne, L. (2013). Spiritual care at the end of life. Nursing Standard, 28(2), 41-45
