Nurses and Ethics of Code
Regardless of what institution or department a person is in, there would be violation of the laws in the workplace. Healthy workplaces basically contribute to the job satisfaction of all the people who are working there. Let alone job satisfaction, it leads to and actually affects patient safety. (Browne, 2009) Now many scholars and experts are looking into the ethics of a workplace and how they go onto affect the workers and the patients. If we examine this in the simplest terms, we see that patient safety is the major goal that every hospital is aiming for. It is true that job satisfaction is required, but if a nurse or a doctor is not satisfied with his job, his work output will not be as good as it can be. This will eventually harm the patient and contribute towards a poor prognosis. Thus, the ethics of a workplace are very important and they contribute to the eventual outcome of that place. (Browne, 2009) The major issue here is that how can an organization make an environment healing and therapeutic for the patients and their families, when the same organization is proving to be harmful for the health staff that is present there. (Jackson & Daly, 2010)
The International Council of Nurses Code of Ethics states that all the nurses have an important responsibility to take appropriate action to protect patients when their care is being hindered by either a co-worker or any other person. Other international and local nursing codes of ethics and other standards that are place also tell the nurses to take action against a person if they putting a person at risk. If we look at this, then a patient's life can be put at risk by illegal, unethical or incompetent acts of a person. There is no hesitation in stating that these acts can be committed by other nurses or even doctors and surgeons.
A code of ethics is basically established on principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, veracity, justice, honesty, autonomy and respect. These codes are made when looking in to all the aspects of the health care system. The people making the code know that guidelines that they are setting and why these rules would be required. The Australian Association of Occupational Therapists code of conduct (2001) stated that a person should be loyal to their organization and he or she should show a decent amount of respect and dignity. In this excerpt, it was strictly stated that a person's responsibility as a member of the society on moral and legal grounds overrides their loyalty to the organization at all times. This means that if the therapist is ever in doubt of the action or the function of their colleague, they can report it to the National Office of OT Australia or the territory Member Association.
Even though, it appears like the moral thing to do and it appears like an easy task, it really isn't. Taking an action at your workplace with conscious knowledge or providing harm to your own colleague or even someone at a senior position than you takes a lot of guts. According to literature, when nurses go on to take a moral step to secure the safety of the patient and the quality of care, it can hurt the nurses to quite an extent. (Ahern & McDonald, 2002)
As it was stated earlier, when there is a violation of a law, the nurses are told to report to an authority. Now many a times, the authority fails to take an action or fails to even respond to the reporting, this therefore leaves the nurses in doubt in the first place. (Johnstone, 1999) Thus, here the nurses are left with the choice of either to stay silent, leave the job where they are working or the last step which is whistle blowing.
We are considering look at that what factors actually cause a person to address instances of criminal behavior. In various North American studies on peer reporting of co-working violations, it has been suggested that most of the nurses are reluctant to report. (Lawton&Parker, 2002) However, Johnstone (2002) stated that when nurses are pushed beyond a certain limit, it is then that they decide to act and take an action towards whatever wrong that is happening.
Therefore, they are many factors that would influence a nurse's decision to report the risks or wrong doings. First and foremost, the individual characteristics of a person play a pivotal role. These characteristics...
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