Imagine being admitted to the hospital and being denied your right to have food and water. While it is known that adequate fluid and nutrition is needed for survival, many health professionals are currently going through an ethical dilemma of whether or not to provide artificial tube feeding for patients with terminal diseases. This ethical decision that affects health professionals must take into consideration the recent research that opposes ANH for this population. These studies have demonstrated that artificial nutrition provides higher risk of medical complications, increased pain, and false hope of health recovery to these patients. Professionals have to be mentally and physically prepared to explain to families the pros and cons of artificial nutrition so that together they can arrive to the best ethical decision for each patient (Brody, Hermer, Scott, Grumbles, Kutac, & McCammon, 2011). For Family and consumer science professionals such as dietetic students provide support to solve this problem when an ethical educational background is incorporated into their major (Hira,1996).
Artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) is defined as providing artificial nutrients and water through an insertion of a tube either into the stomach, the gastrointestinal tract, or through a vein. (Best, 2010). Physicians prefer to use artificial nutrition as the last resort for any type of nutritional feeding. Temporarily artificial nutrition is used until the patient recuperates and is
In this assignment I will be describing the characteristics of nutrients and the benefits to the body.
Principles of ethics 1 rule A says, "Individuals shall fully inform the persons they serve of the nature and possible effects of services rendered and products dispensed, and they shall inform participants in research about the possible effects of their participation in research conducted." The clinician inserting a gastrostomy tube would go against the first principle because there is no way to inform the patient of the benefits and consequences of the feeding
In the field of nursing, the ANA Code of Ethics is designed to provide specific bylaws that will influence the practices of health care professionals inside the industry. However, there are different advocacy campaigns that will have an impact on how it is interpreted and applied. In the case of advocacy for population health, these issues mean that there could be moral dilemmas faced in the process (most notably: lifestyle choices and their impact on the individual). (Butts, 2012)
As a Family Nurse Practitioner, I hope to teach disease prevention and use individualized treatment and advice to incorporate patients’ disease processes into their lifestyle. "Most deaths in the United States are preventable, and they are related to what we eat. Our diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability"(Greger & Stone, 2015, p. 1). Knowing those statistics scare me. After getting my Family Nurse Practitioner Degree, I would have the autonomy to educate my patients about their diet and how it can prevent and/or maintain their current
Aiding the death of infants is a much disputed controversy in healthcare. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. provides an ethical view that there is a moral duty not to treat an impaired infant when this will only prolong a painful life or would only lead to a painful death. It is these individuals, like Engelhardt, who must defend this position against groups who consider that we have the ability to prolong the lives of impaired infants, thus we are obligated to do so.
This problem first began to surface in the 1980s when the court had to face Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health. In this case the court had to decide by “clear and convincing evidence” that the comatose patient’s (Nancy Beth Cruzan) desire to terminate her life before the courts would allow her family’s wish of disconnecting her feeding tube be carried out. Unfortunately eight of nine judges said no to the proposition and concluded that the right
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,
Which data indicates the need for the nurse to evaluate Mrs. Rusk further for altered nutrition? (Select all that apply.)
The Cuban heritage are known to have high-risk behavior of having unprotected sex. Most of these sex acts occurs among teenagers. Cuban teenagers commits sexual acts because of family conflict. The
Ethical dilemmas exist everywhere around us in everyday situations. Something as simple as picking up a piece of trash off the floor to whether you should use a previously written paper from a separate class for a current assignment in this class. It exists in reality and even on television shows. How, then, do people resolve these ethical dilemmas and how do they defend their decisions? Nurse Jackie is a television series impregnated with ethical dilemmas, especially in medical care. In this paper, I will discuss the ethical issues found in the “Tiny Bubbles” episode of Nurse Jackie. I will further discuss the ethical reasoning with support of ethical principles. In addition, I will discuss how patient’s autonomy and non-maleficence principle of bioethics plays a role in decision making. Overall, there was a difficult struggle on the ethical theory of and utilitarianism, with ethical relativism playing a huge factor.
This paper is written to discuss the ethical dilemma we come across when asking our self whether or not we should place a tube feeding in a patient with a history Alzheimer’s or Dementia. Will this prolong the patients’ life or just the inevitable death? Most often a decision needs to be made regarding the placement of a tube feeding. The question is not initiated by the patient themselves. This is the reason why educating our patients are so important. In this paper I will discuss how important the role of the healthcare professional plays in advocating for a patient. To help answer this ethical dilemma several issues will be explored. I will focus on the seven principles of ethics, education, utilitarianism, top-down
Ever since I can remember, I have always wanted to do something special in life. I was born in a small village in Mexico where public health and education were very limited. In 1996, my family and I got the opportunity to move to the United States. This move brought me closer than I had ever thought possible to accomplishing my dream of becoming a registered dietitian and working in public health nutrition. I have always valued my education because where I am from it was really difficult to study beyond middle school. Here, in the United States, I have gotten the chance to further my education beyond high school.
While the nursing profession is fulfilling, it is not without challenges. Nurses are faced with a multitude of ethical dilemmas in clinical practice on a daily basis. According to Fant (2012) no matter where nurses function in their diverse roles, they are faced with ethical decisions that can impact them and their patients. Some examples of moral issues that nurses encounter in contemporary nursing practice and research include but not limited to: refusal of treatment, scarcity of resources, disagreement with caregivers, treating patients with impaired decision-making, futile treatment decisions for cancer patients, end-of-life decisions, advanced treatment directives, and euthanasia (Leuter, Petrucci, Mattei, Tabassi, & Lancia, 2013).
Healthcare professionals will be faced with ethical dilemmas throughout their career, particularly in the hospital environment. Having an education regarding professional healthcare ethics will provide some direction in how to best address these dilemmas at a time when either the patient or their family is in need of making decisions for themselves or their family member. It can be difficult for healthcare professionals to weigh professional protocol against their own personal beliefs and ethical understandings when determining critical care for their patient.
Ethics, in medicine, is described as applying one’s morals and values to healthcare decisions (Fremgen 2012). It requires a critical-thinking approach that examines important considerations such as fairness for all patients, the impact of the decision on society and the future repercussions of the decision (Fremgen 2012). According to Fremgen (2012), bioethics concerns ethical issues discussed in the perspective of advanced medical technology. Goldman and Schafer (2012) state bioethical issues that arise in medical practice include antibiotics, dialysis, transplantation, intensive care units, issues of genetics, reproductive choices and termination of care. In clinical practice the most common issues revolve around informed consent, termination of life-sustaining treatments, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and conflicts of interest (Goldman, Schafer 2012).