Ethical Issues in Nursing. Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay

Ethical Issues in Nursing
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Nurses encounter difficult situations that challenge their ethical principles in their jobs. They have to reconcile their values with their professional nursing obligation to make the best decisions in these situations. Not promptly addressing ethical issues is a problem that if ignored can threaten the patients, the organization they work for and their profession.
Section A
1. For each ethical challenge, describe one potential legal implication.
Disclosing Medical Conditions to Patients
Nurses find themselves in a tricky spot about conveying some information to the patients and their relatives. A nurse is trained and expected to tell the truth to the patient even when the truth is hard. According to CITATION Sar14 \l 1033 (Sarafis, Tsounis, Malliarou, & Lahana, 2014), ‘balancing hope with honesty is one of the most important skills of the art of medicine.’ They are supposed to give it to them as it is and also advise them on their treatment options. In some cases, the family of the patient can come in and request the nurse to lie to the patient about their medical condition or diagnosis. On one hand, the nurse must consider the patient’s right to know ad on the other the family claims and may table convincing reasons why he/she should not do that. They may claim the knowledge of the medical condition or diagnosis may prompt the patient to behave differently and in a way that may make their treatment more challenging such as refuse medication hence worsening his/or her medical condition. On the other hand, the nurse understands that lying to the patient is against his/her professional obligations and is suable in a court of law. It is an offence that can prompt the professional body to withdraw the nurse’s practicing license.
The principle of fidelity compels nurses to always keep their promises. They must at all times be faithful to their professional promises which include telling their patients the whole truth. Professional promises are designed to ensure that the nurse provides high-quality care competently while observing the code of ethics. Additionally, nurses at all times must observe the principle of veracity that they must tell their patients the truth even when it could cause distress to the patients. Secondly, the principle of nonmaleficence. A nurse cannot do any harm to the patient whether intentional or unintentionally and participating in a scheme that denies the patient to know the truth is doing harm to the patient.
Incompetence among peers
Nurses can encounter incompetence among peers in their line of work. Incompetence or ignorance threatens the quality of care given to the patient. Sometimes a nurse can notice incompetence with a colleague and will be troubled on how to voice it. CITATION Mau16 \l 1033 (Maurits, Veer, Groenewegen, & Francke, 2016) pointed out that ‘many nursing staff members experience difficulty in reporting suspicions of professional misconduct, especially in the case of suspected impairment.’ Keeping quiet he/she understands that it will harm the patient and affect the quality of care the patient receives from the facility. Incompetence also can harm the patient and it violates the principles of the Hippocratic oath for medical professionals. Secondly, speaking it out sometimes even in the calmest way and or following the policy framework of sorting such issues may not work out effectively. A likely result of confronting such issues and addressing them formally is that it can sour relationships at the workplace and affect the team’s synergy. Even when the colleague understands the gravity of their incomp...