Ethics in the Nursing Field

Nursing is a highly stressful and challenging position. Not every individual can be a nurse. To select this career as your personal choice requires a deep connection with humanity as well as the ability to disconnect in order to choose wisely and make ethical decisions in any given situation. As a nurse you are expected to act duty and entitlement based with all patients regardless of one’s personal opinion. A nurse has undeviating contact on a daily basis with many stages of sick patients. The simplicity of an ethical business behavior does not seem as reasonable when you are faced with an un-diagnosable child and you want dearly to give the parents a breath of hope when it isn’t the correct thing to do or say. When you are in an ethical dilemma, there is a very thin line that you should not cross and your morals and values have to take place in your judgment. Nurses have to abide by standards of medicine and must be fully professional at all times in order to not have a comment taken out of content which may be the loss of the nursing license for such individual. I was in a predicament at one point in my nursing career where there was this child that would come back into the emergency room weekly with mental outbursts. This unfortunate situation was devastating for the mother as anyone that has a child could understand. This fragile looking boy could go from kind to completely uncontrollable in less than one minute. His records showed that he has been Baker Acted 5 times by the age of 7. He had also been put on numerous amounts of medication and had several diagnoses all not otherwise specified. Basically, in essence; no one could really pin point what was wrong with this poor child. A colleague of the unit felt that it was her humanistic duty to give this distressed mother a bit of optimism. She implied that the boy should be taken to church and perhaps a higher power could assist in curing his illness. At first I felt that it was unethical to bring religion into the medical practice and that this nurse was acting unprofessional and was out of line. Nonetheless, after seeing the mothers’ reaction to her recommendation; I noticed a change in her demeanor; like there was hope. Is it not part of our chosen profession as nurses to give hope to patients and their loved ones? There is a certain ethical system known as relativistic; in which we, as professionals are allowed to use our own personalized approach to ethics. So if this said colleague felt that by spreading faith, the parent of what looked to be an untreatable child could have a moment of peace, how could this be a wrongdoing? I then, at that moment realized it was all intended for the same final goal. To cure a child is all one could want and anticipate as a nurse. This mother would remember the words this nurse told her. "They may forget your name but they will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou It is also true that a nurse could find herself in a situation where she has too many patients and cannot provide adequate care for all of them on her own. It is a nurse’s ethical duty to provide the greatest care of each and every patients and this could be hindered if the patient to nurse ratio is off balance. Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon. -Dag Hammarskjold Florence Nightingale said it best when she said that apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. A nurse’s character has to show at all times while treating a patient. Patients deserve to be attended to at their time of need. Nurses are around the patients more that Doctors. Often doctors are needed at a precise time to prescribe adequate medications, or to speak with a patient that is declines to take such medications when it will be favorable to such patient. When a Doctor is not available it becomes an ethical dilemma for this patient as the nurse cannot make this medical decision. Hospitals operate under an ethical system to ensure that all medical staff operates with certain ethical principles and any deviation of such can result in removal of their medical license regardless of position. I agree with the rules and regulations that are enforced in institutions for all medical personnel to follow. Without these guidelines there would be no patterns to follow. In any profession one should always give ones all at all times. However, when you are in the medical field, a patient’s life is in your hands. With this being said, a nurse needs to be prepared to not provide care if she is not equipped to do so. When nurses fluctuate from department to department as needed in their profession, they may find themselves in inexperienced position where they are not prepared to give the adequate care. At that instant, for the benefit of the patient she may have to refuse to provide care to avoid making the patient unsafe, and perhaps even make a deadly decision due to being unqualified in such department. Ultimately, the patient is the number one priority at all times. Not only as a nurse but as a human being, I value every person’s life as an individual. I believe that everyone should be given the same care regardless of color, race, religious beliefs, or monetary status. A life is a life nonetheless. Therefore when nurses or any one in the medical field take an oath to take care of patients to the best of their abilities; they should be prepared to do just that. And above and beyond when the need arises. Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said the finest of Fine Arts. ~Florence Nightingale I chose to become and grew into a nurse due to my love for people, for life. I will always give my all and treat patients as people first not as patients. One thing I’ve learned in my career is, if you treat the person and not the illness you cannot go wrong.