Ethics In Nursing For Medical Research And Health Sciences

Identification of Ethical Issues

Discuss about the Ethics in Nursing for Medical Research and Health Sciences.
 

Profession of nursing is always encircled with the code of ethics as it involves lives of people. Ethics can be defined as the values which addresses the questions of morals. Since the ancient times, there have been health challenges faced by the people and still the process is going on. This report focuses on the ethical issue which is termed as Autonomy (Hamid, Kanwal, Bajwa, Khalid, & Mubarak, 2016). The values and ethics which are associated with this scenario is that all the nurses should act ethically in any situation and should be able to maintain the morals and respect their client’s decisions. Also, one more ethics issue is highlighted in this case is that the patient should have the right to know everything about himself and his family too. Nurses cannot hide anything or give them false hopes.

There are two types of ethical issue which can be seen in the Case study 4. Autonomy, limiting medications and other services and right to information are the three main ethical dilemmas which can be seen in this case. Autonomy is related to the freedom which should be provided to every patient and his family members to take their own decisions about the treatment. This can also be defined as respecting the individuals as self controlled choosers. This means that the prior consent is to be taken from the patients before starting any kind of treatment (Fowler & Davis, 2013). In this case, Archie Simpson was going to live only for a few months. The midwife gave the parents false information to not lose hope and keep fighting. Right to information is another ethical issue; Archie’s parents had to go through. They were not given proper information about the treatment. At first, they were told that Archie could recover and the treatment went on. Later, the problem increased and doctors again said that there was no hope. Legally too, the family members and the patient have the right to have all the information about the disease. The information given to them should be absolutely correct. Any false information given is considered to be ethically wrong. The third and the last ethical issue was of limiting the medications or other services once the doctors knew that there was no further hope for Archie (Fouka & Mantzorou, 2011). They were in need of beds and hence, asked to stop every curable treatment for him. Need of more beds t o be freed should not be the reason to stop treating a patient whose treatment is ongoing already. The duty of the nurse is to act like he/she has best interest to keep the patient healthy and cured. They can do no harm to the patients. This can be done when the nurses act as the advocates to the needs and thoughts of the patient. Though there are limits in the good that nurse can do for t heir patients but nurses can always follow the code of ethics for placing the interest of their patients (Aitamaa, Kilpi, Iltanen, & Suhonen, 2015). 

Analysis of Ethical Issues

There is analysis of Ethical Issues done with respect to a few points. They are as follows:

• Legislation: Law supports the safety of t he patient in all the countries which are developed in terms of ethics. There is a variation is safety of the patients within countries as there are different nationalities and different legislation everywhere. Example: wherever Finland has a well developed health care system, there is demand for the preservation of the safety of patient and it is documented in the constitution as health care act. The legislative documents that are national always differ in displaying safety of the patient. International documents unify it though. The regions of WHO like Eastern, African and Mediterranean motivates the developing countries to link with the counterparts and with people who make policies for taking action for the improvement of healthcare in terms of ethics. From the perspective of nursing management, the promotion of the patient safety is not just considered a moral issue but it is a legal necessity too which is also involved in the mission of health care(Kangasniemi, Vaismoradi, Jasper, & Turunen, 2013).
• Human Rights: Profession of nursing always should feel the importance of the human rights of people and it is their moral responsibility that they safeguard the dignity of every patient. This involves respect and recognition wherever possible, to protect cultural, political, civil and rights that human beings possess. The significance of relationship between human’s rights and health is acknowledged by this profession(Australia, 2008).  There is always diversity of people which is acknowledged by Nursing. People with diversity involve Australian Society, immigrants, refuges, detainees and asylum seekers. The work of nurses is to be culturally competent and responsive to every individual who needs care and improvement in health.
• Dignity: One should always value and respect others. This is an important thing to do when in the profession of Nursing. This involves respecting of ethical values of humans in terms of the health care. There should be simple acts of kindness and gentleness. Kindness should become a practice to pursue every day in order to lessen the imbalance in between patient and nurse(Manookian, Cheraghi, & Nasrabadi, 2013).   

1. Self: Respect for self helps the nurses to promote their personal well being which will push up their self worth. It involves maintenance of own health, to know about their own physical limitations and to develop the qualities which encourages good professional relations.  
2. Person: People who are looking for health care should be given respect and should be well informed so that they recognize their capacity of their own health. By practicing kindness, nurses can maintain the dignity of people. Individuals become vulnerable and feel low when they come to know about the illness. There can be an importance of relativity in between nurse and patients when they have less information about the illness and when they need assistance which includes personal care too(Valizadeh, Khoshknab, Mohammadi, Ebrahimi, & Bostanabad, 2016).
3. Colleagues: There should be respect for colleagues too in nursing. This involves respecting the knowledge they have, experience they gained, their expertise and insights. Kindness should be practiced within the organization in between each other. For this collaborative approaches can be adopted, taking each other views and respecting each other’s feelings too.
4. Community: The community respect means the nurses will have to distinguish and respond to all the moral claims which society has and the human rights too. This includes giving responses to the people whenever they need them and taking necessary initiatives for the promotion and protection of rights of people(Heijkenskjold, Ekstedt, & Lindwall, 2010).

• There should be levels in staffing in wards and they should also be skill mix which is based on patient dependency as nurses need time for their patients.  
• Clinical leaderships should be strong. The sister who are free from the management, they should be given the responsibility of clinical care with clerical support.  
• Instead of managers, nurses should manage nurses. Chief Nurses should be able to manage workforce directly(kovner, Brewer, Yingrengreung, & Fairchild, 2010).
• Graduate nurses should feel confident in practicing and hence, degree courses are needed.
• Second level nurses should be introduced.  
• New staff should be trained by making preceptor program compulsory. They should qualify first and then only they would be able to become nurses.
• The code of conduct followed by every nurse should be monitored.
• Patient dignity should be kept on priority. The work environment should be kept that way.
• Powerful nurses are needed to maintain department of health who can take necessary actions whenever needed(Shepherd, 2011).

Conclusion 

Ethical issues always keep on coming in daily lives of people as well as the nurses too. A little consideration can change the way of professional nursing and can improve the working environment of nursing. Codes of ethics are the very basic and fundamental guide for professional nursing just like other professions. It is said that 86.4% of nurses know about the code of ethics but only 41.8% of nurses act ethically when it comes to act (Aghdam, Hassankhani, Zamanzadeh, Khameneh, & Moghaddam, 2013). Due to a little difference in the perception of the nurse and patients, there can be problems with the people who are looking for health care. This report focuses on the ethical issues of nursing which can be rectified just by the few recommendations mentioned above. Ethics in terms of the human rights, legislation and dignity are also discussed in order to explain that a small act of kindness can maintain the code of conducts between the patients and nurses.  

References 

Aghdam, A. M., Hassankhani, H., Zamanzadeh, V., Khameneh, S., & Moghaddam, S. (2013). Knowledge and Performance about Nursing Ethic Codes from Nurses’ and Patients’ Perspective in Tabriz Teaching Hospitals, Iran. Journal of Caring Sciences , 2 (3), 219-227.

Aitamaa, E., Kilpi, H. L., Iltanen, S., & Suhonen, R. (2015). Ethical problems in nursing management: The views of nurse managers. Nursing ethics , 23 (6).

Australia, B. o. (2008). Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia. Retrieved April 20, 2018, from nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au: file:///C:/Users/Nidhi%20Vyas_JPR/Downloads/5_New-Code-of-Ethics-for-Nurses-August-2008.PDF

Fouka, G., & Mantzorou, M. (2011). What are the mejor Ethical Issues in Conducting Research? Is there a conflict between the research ethics and the nature of Nursing? Health Science Journal , 5 (1), 3-14.

Fowler, M. D., & Davis, A. J. (2013). Ethical Issues occuring within Nursing education. Two Decades of Nursing Ethics , 20 (2), 126-141.

Hamid, S., Kanwal, R., Bajwa, M. H., Khalid, S., & Mubarak, H. (2016). Ethical Issues Faced by Nurses during Nursing Practice in Pakistan. Diversity and Equality in Health and Care , 13 (4), 302-308.

Heijkenskjold, K. B., Ekstedt, M., & Lindwall, L. (2010). Research articleThe patient’s dignity from thenurse’s perspective. Nursing ethics , 17 (3), 313-324.

Kangasniemi, M., Vaismoradi, M., Jasper, M., & Turunen, H. (2013). Ethical issues in patient safety:Implications for nursing management. Nursing Ethics , 1 (13).

kovner, C. T., Brewer, C. S., Yingrengreung, S., & Fairchild, S. (2010). New Nurses’ Views of Quality Improvement Education. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety , 36 (1).

Manookian, A., Cheraghi, M. A., & Nasrabadi, A. N. (2013). Factors influencing patients’ dignity: A qualitative study. Nursing Ethics , 1-12.

Shepherd, E. (2011). My top 10 suggestions for improving nursing’. Retrieved April 20, 2018, from nursingtimes.net: https://www.nursingtimes.net/roles/nurse-managers/my-top-10-suggestions-for-improving-nursing/5035938.blog

Valizadeh, S., Khoshknab, M. F., Mohammadi, E., Ebrahimi, H., & Bostanabad, M. A. (2016). Dignity and respect are the missing link of nurses’ empowerment. International Journal of Medical Research & Health Sciences , 5 (3), 110-115.

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