- What personal, cultural, and spiritual values contribute to your worldview and philosophy of nursing?
Morality is habitual. It shapes the character of individuals and communities. Health professionals must exhibit the three subgroups of morality: personal, societal, and the morality of the health professions and its institutions. Personal morality comprises of values, duties, actions and character that a person accepts as relevant for his/her life. As a health professional, personal morality helps you to understand and respect the personal morality of patients, staff mates, and other people you come into professional contact. Integrity is an essential resource in the professional life. Integrity it is among the values that makeup personal morality. Personal integrity is a personal’s commitment to live a moral life. A professional nurse of integrity must be honest, reliable and not hypocritical. Also, in nursing the person of integrity fulfills the obligations of his professional life. Therefore, moral integrity is the awareness of doing morally right thing.
- How do these values shape or influence your nursing practice?
Societal/ cultural morality comprises values and ideas of duty. They emanate from religious, philosophic, and anthropologic beliefs about humans and their relationship with God. Cultural morality is contained in laws, customs and policies. For example, everyone has an equal chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. However, the current health care debates deal with the morality of abortion and assisted suicide. Professional morality in nursing promotes moral responsibility, values and characters that do not apply equally or at all to others in the society. For example, citizens are not required to provide medical attention to one another.
- Define values, morals, and ethics in the context of your obligation to nursing practice.
Values can be referred as the means that have emerged to identify intrinsic things that a person, group or society holds dear or adheres to. Morals are established guidelines of the society and behavior that dictate the way things ought to be and the types of things we should value (Purtilo, 2010). Morals are standards accepted by the society allowing the assumptions on which morality is based. Morality is what individuals and groups feel strongly about what is right and wrong. Its goal is to protect high quality of life for an individual or the community. In addition, moral values are essentials in the nursing profession. However, not all values are moral values. Ethics is a health restoring resource. Ethics provides a language and procedures for evaluating the components of personal, societal, and group morality. Ethics in nursing are used to clarify, organize and critique morality (Purtilo, 2010). Therefore, ethics is a discipline that uses unique methods and approaches to examine ethical situations.
- Explain how your personal values, philosophy, and world view may conflict with your obligation to practice, creating an ethical dilemma.
The policies of health care and other institutions prevent individuals from participating in processes, procedures, or other activities that counter personal and professional moral integrity. Moralities may clash at times. For example, institutional policies’ regarding the performance of abortions has caused deep consternation for some health professionals because of their personal morality. Some health care facilities pass policies that commit the institution to administer medically safe abortions to women. Therefore, a mechanism to protect personal moral convictions in abortion procedures is necessary. People through the ages have conflicted with institutional practices that grate against their personal moral values.
- Reflect and share your personal thoughts regarding the morals and ethical dilemmas you may face in the health care field.
National and state should codify moral values and types of responsibility that govern individual and institutional conduct related to the health professions. Laws should provide conditions under which health professionals have license to practice (Purtilo, 2010). Also, they must provide clarification related to a health profession’s competence and other issues. It should be based on moral values relevant to the health professional and patient relationship. This should be after understanding of professional and societal expectations of the moral character experts’ should exhibit.
Nursing programs should include a course on health care law that governs their profession. A caring response is a moral goal for health professional and patient relationship (Purtilo, 2010). Therefore, it should be a mastery of health professional identity. In health care delivery, nursing is usually cast for good reasons. However, it is easy to ignore the reality that searching and acting according to what it requires is a burden at times. Health professionals’ should prioritize care giving for self fulfillment and job satisfaction. Many professionals usually recount how their work has given them remarkable insights, and how they have been inspired by patients that help keep the professional going. In addition, professional care giving it benefits by putting a health professional in a position to participate in activities that society respects.
- How do your personal views affect your behavior and your decision making?
In the nursing, you must learn to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes in response to varying clinical situations that require professional decisions. As a nurse, it means one must learn to be responsible for his/ her actions on both clients and the public. Clinical reasoning must be applied in planning, directing, performance and reflection on the care. Nurses should use clinical reasoning to analyze and synthesize what they have gathered in the care of the patient. The process of clinical reasoning is required because it guides decision making in the care of the patient.
References
Purtilo, R. B. (2010). Ethical dimensions in the health professions. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Co.
American Nurses Association (2008). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. Washington, D.C: American Nurses Association.
