The American Nurses Association Code for Nurses discusses the ethical behavior for nurses and the best course of action in a certain situation. Nurses can be evaluated by a set of standards which determines how well the nurse understands how the law applies specifically to them. Four of the most important ethical principles are beneficence, nonmaleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice (Murray & McKinney, 2006). Other important ethical rules, such as accountability and confidentiality, are derived from these four basic principles. These principles direct decision making and analyze what is morally right and reasonable. The legal and ethical issue I encountered in the clinical setting was failure to protect patient rights.
The healthcare setting is demanding environment for nurses who have a responsibility to meet the needs of patients. An ethical issue can occur in any healthcare situation where profound moral questions of “rightness” or “wrongness” underlie professional decision-making and the beneficent care of patients (Ulrich et al., 2010). An ethical issue deals with virtues and values related to human conduct and is less focused on factual knowledge.
During my clinical practice I encountered a nurse violate a patient’s right to receive medical care that meets the highest of standards, the right to be treated respectfully and the right to appropriate management of pain. This patient had open wounds covering his lower legs which required dressing change every 12 hours. The patient had requested pain medication 30 minutes prior to the dressing changes. This nurse verbally expressed her anger about changing these dressings and ignored the patients request for pain medication. The nurse quickly removed the old dressings and aggressively scraped off the necrotic tissue. The patient was screaming in pain and became aggressive towards the nurse. The nurse