Ethics In Nursing

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As nurses, we deal with a variety of situations in the patient care setting. Nurses are expected to care for their patient as much as possible. It is also expected that nurses advocate for their patients well-being. However, some time Nurses go through stress in every day practice as they confronted with situations involving ethical dilemmas. It creates a moral distress, if nurses cannot do what is morally right thing to do because of organizational policy. According to Jameton (1984) “Nursing is the moral center of healthcare and provides the true image and inspiration of ethical care and compassion” (Edmonson, C., 2010). When we stand up for our patients benefit and our own ethical beliefs, it shows our moral courage.
It is my responsibility
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Many times, I see that the doctors do not agree on what is good for patient’s health. Sometime the doctors does not return our call on time, which might put our patient’s health at risk. I might hesitate to report because of fear of hurting my coworkers, that person might lose their job. In some case, there might be risk factors for nurses when standing up for their ethical beliefs. This is because of possible risk factors such as stress, arguments, fear of termination or isolation from coworkers. Another example is inadequate staffing. According to hospital policy, I my acute in patient rehab floor there is no nursing assistant assign for night shift. Night shift RN’s has been complaining for long time. Over this issue, sometime nurses change the floor and move to another floor where they get help at night. Other nurses gets anger, frustrated and sometime call in sick. Some nurse have courage to let the manager know, …show more content…
Moral distress has two dimension. Initial dimension and reactive dimension. Initial moral distress happen, when the nurses experience with interpersonal value conflicts. It is feelings of frustration, anxiety, anger, and an inability to act due to organizational restrictions. Reactive moral distress happen, when the nurses do not act upon the initial distressing situation to bring about resolution might result in low self-esteem, self-hate, and job