Nurse Jackie And Assisted Suicide

Working in the field as health care professionals, we are faced with ethical dilemmas almost always. Although each individual posses different values, there are specific codes of conduct to abide by, despite personal beliefs. Without the use of a structural code, individuals in the health care field would make decisions based on their own personal beliefs in accordance to their culture and religion. In the case of Marion and the pacemaker, we witness the desires of the patient at hand, Marion, and her family, be interrogated by the floor nurses. Although the intent behind the actions of the floor nurses can be described as morally just, thinking they are helping preserve the life of Marion, based on medical ethics, their behavior is of some degree to be questioned. This paper will focus on the boundaries we witness crossed by floor nurses and how they go against the medical ethics approved, and what effects they have on patients and their care givers.

Within healthcare, practitioners often have to make difficult decisions regarding the care of their patients. This could be to do with giving or withdrawing treatment, or as simple as sharing risk information (Glover, 1997). Ultimately, the practitioner must be able to rationalise any decision they have made (Morrison, 2009). With this in mind, the following assignment will draw upon an ethical dilemma and explore how theoretical perspectives can be utilised within the decision making process. Therefore it will also be pertinent to draw upon the law, and how this influences actions within health care. To facilitate this discussion, I will identify a scenario from practice that

Today many nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals encounter ethical dilemmas on a daily basis. An ethical dilemma can be defined as when there is more than one reasonable solution to a specific scenario. No one solution is more right than the other. In fact, they may both feel wrong, but a decision must be made (Butts & Rich, 2016). In the healthcare setting, nurses should be prepared to think critically and make ethical decisions. There are many factors that contribute to the process of ethical decision making such as ethical perspectives, principles, theories, and guidelines. Ethical decision making is to be rational and systematic. The selected case to be discussed is the case of Jahi McMath,

Nurses are faced with ethical dilemmas on a daily basis, each situation being unique and requiring the nurse to set aside their own values and beliefs in order to properly care for their patients. Situations requiring nurses to make an ethical decision are diverse and dynamic; the values set out by the College of Nurses of Ontario code of ethics remains the same. Therefore, all decision based on these vales regardless of the setting and circumstances ensure consistent solutions. The scenario involves a woman who was admitted to the NICU due to complications during her sixth month of pregnancy. The patient indicated that no extraordinary measures should be made to save her baby; she became further detached when the baby developed a bleed

The issues of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are both emotional and controversial. Some argue PAS is ethically permissible for a dying person who has chosen to escape unbearable suffering at the end of life; it is the physician’s duty to alleviate the patient’s suffering and justifies aid-in-dying. These arguments rely on the respect for individual autonomy. “Individual autonomy is an idea that is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces.” (STANDFORD REF)

The ethics of physician-assisted suicide of terminally ill patients is a very ambiguous topic. Critics see physician-assisted deaths as normalization of the growing death culture that started in 1973 with the legalization of abortion.

Ethics, the rules and principles that guide right behaviors or conduct, are foundational to the field of bioethics, which focuses on ethical issues in healthcare (Mclennon, Uhrich, Lasiter, Chamnes, & Helft, 2013). Nurses are faced with ethical decision making principles daily when caring for their patients, some days more than others. According to Yoder-Wise (2011), ethics may be distinguished from the law because ethics is internal to an individual, looks to the ultimate “good” of an individual rather than society as a whole, and concerns the “why” of one’s actions (p. 91). In this particular situation, the nurse has to decide if she will respect the wishes of the patient’s family members or be upfront and honest with her patient and

Many nurses are regularly confronted with the hopelessness and exhaustion of patients and their families making it difficult for them to find balance between the preservation of life and the enablement of a dignified death. Nurses must acknowledge their own feelings of sorrow, fear, dismay and helplessness and recognize the impact of these emotions in clinical decision making. These distressing pressures may cause a nurse to contemplate intentionally assist in ending a patient's life as a humane and compassionate answer, however; the conventional goals and standards of the nursing profession mitigate against it.

Nurses confront numerous dilemmas throughout their professional lives. The different types of dilemmas include, but are not limited to, ethical, moral, and legal dilemmas. These are the three most common dilemmas in nursing. A dilemma can be defined in many different ways. But all dilemmas are situations in which you have to make a difficult choice. Chiaranai (2011) states that an “ethical dilemma is a circumstance that arises from fundamental conflicts between ethical beliefs, duties, principles and theories” (p. 250). Therefore, an ethical dilemma forces the nurse to address thought on what is right and what the harm might be to the patient.

In the ever changing role and dynamic atmosphere that healthcare provides, unique challenges and opportunities constantly arise which are a multi-faceted labyrinth of ethical and moral dilemma. One of the most contested and widely debated topics to be found in the healthcare workplace today is the subject of Assisted Suicide. Altering a person’s course of death into a process driven role, rather than the client’s final life event, creates a myriad of ethical and moral dilemmas.

"Only because I knew that I could not and would not kill my patients was I able to enter most fully and intimately into caring for them as they lay dying (Doerflinger, Richard M., M.D, and Carlos F. Gomez, Ph.D). In this quote given by a physician, one sees that even from a professional’s standpoint on physician-assisted suicide, one is opposed to that act of helping someone to take his or her own life. When given the opportunity, this physician would rather help to improve the life of the patient rather than ending a life that does not need to end and that is the viewpoint that all should take on this controversial topic. Throughout this paper, one will see just how affected people are by the repercussions

Health care professionals make ethical choices on a daily basis within the work environment. Nurses, in particular, make ethical decisions every day when caring for patients, whether when explaining procedures to patients, performing actions related to doctors’ orders, telling the patient their results, or answering the patients’ questions. These choices can result in positive or negative outcomes, which incorporates the four principles of bioethics into every situation in relation to handling the deliverance of patient related information. There are four principles of ethics which include the principle of respect for autonomy, the principle of nonmaleficence, the principle of beneficence, and the principle of justice (McCormick, 2013).

Nurses rely on personal knowledge and their professional skills to provide ethical care (Creasia & Friberg, 2011). In everyday practice, nurses must balance the needs of their patients against those of the organization, society and themselves. They strive to deliver the highest level of care for patients, but adjusting for limited organizational and personal resources often requires difficult decisions. This paper explores the following scenario suggested by Maville and Huerta: “You are a nurse providing home care to a mother, and you suspect child abuse after observing the mother’s reaction to her child” (as cited by Arizona State University, 2014). When faced with a moral dilemma, a competent nurse incorporates ethical, bioethical and legal considerations. In the proposed story, incorporating the nursing ethics of advocacy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and collaboration will guide the nurse towards an appropriate and legal course of action.

`Ethics' is defined as ."..the basis on which people...decide that certain actions are right or wrong and whether one ought to do something or has a right to something"(Rumbold, 1986). In relating `ethics' to nursing care, "Nursing decisions affect people... nurses have the power to good or harm to their patients" (Bandman et al, 2002). In this essay, the author will also identify the most important ethical principles and concepts of Evan's case, will outline the different stages of one's approach to ethical decision-making by utilising the "DECIDE Model for Ethical Decision-Making" founded by Thompson et al (2000) and will make a decision on the best course of action to take as a nurse in this

An ethical dilemma is defined as a mental state when the nurse has to make a choice between the options and choices that he or she has at her disposal. The choice is a crucial task as the opting of the step will subsequently determine the health status of the concerned patient, hence it requires a great deal of wisdom along with proper medical and health training before any such step is opted as it is a matter of life and death. Strong emphasis should therefore be on the acquisition of proper knowledge and skills so that nurses do posses the autonomy to interact with patients regarding ethical issues involved in health care affairs and address them efficiently. It is normally argued that nurses are not provided sufficient