Nursing and Ethical Considerations

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer addresses three important themes for the acute care nurse practitioner (ACNP) and the clinical nurse specialist (CNS): ethical principles and ethical issues in patient care, professional resources available to help the ACNP, research highlighting the effectiveness of the ACNP and CNS in acute care. The writer also covers five ethical principles that guide the ACNP/CNS in their practice and notes that the move to procedure-based medicine requires the nurse to make more serious life-or-death decisions for the patient than in the past. The writer concludes that whereas the primary burden of patient care decision-making was placed on the physician in the past, the nurse must now weigh various ethical imperatives in order to make the right decision for the patient at the time.

Outline:
Introduction
Ethical Principles for the ACNP and CNS
Nonmaleficence
Utilitarianism
Justice
Fidelity
Veracity
Autonomy
Ethical Issues in Patient Care: Advance Directives
Ethical Issue in Patient Care: Clashing Ethical Requirements
Professional Resources
ACNP/CNS Effectiveness in Acute Care
Patients Spend Less Time in the Hospital
ACPN/CNS' Have Been Given Greater Responsibility
Increasing Cost Pressures Require Greater Nurse Participation
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The legal aspects of patient treatment have come to the fore, but should not be regarded as equivalent to ethics issues. Much of what happens in the privacy of the intensive-care suite, the hospice or the general floors happens outside the purview of the medico-legal profession.
"Nurses make decisions today about patient care that they have not had to make in the past. Part of the reason for this is that hospitalized patients, on average, are sicker than they were in the past (mainly due to the shortened stay periods) and the need of physicians to leverage their care decisions with better-educated specialist nurses."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Beckstrand, J. Nursing Ethics Homepage. n.d. 6 June 2007 <http://www.iupui.edu/~ikux100/petra/ethics.html>.
• Benbow, M. Ethics and Wound Management. JCN Online. (2006): 28.
• Bruce, K. & Steinke, E. The Acute Care Nurse Practitioner in Hospital-Based Practice. Kansas Nurse. (2006): 1.
• Draeger, J. An Ethical Dilemma Involving a Shy-Drager Patient: A Case Study. Journal of Neuroscience Nursing. (2006): 400-402.
• Furlong, B. Social Justice in Nursing Education and Research. Justice in Jesuit Higher Edudcation Conference, John Carroll University. Omaha: John Carroll University, 2005. 16.

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