Verified Document

Nursing Ethics In An End Of Life Scenario Essay

Related Topics:

Ethical Issue One of the most important ethical issues in nursing is how to approach end-of-life care. Nurses have a duty to provide compassionate care in ways that respects the individual’s autonomy and dignity. As patients live longer due to advancements in medical care, nurses are increasingly being faced with care options that extend life, versus options that do not extend life but which promote quality of life through a greater acceptance of death. A related issue is physician-assisted suicide. When physician-assisted suicide is legal, nurses may have this option presented to them by patients, creating ethical dilemmas. This paper will examine multiple sides of the end-of-life issue, showing that while there is no easy or “right” solution, individual cases should highlight the means by which nurses can always ascribe to their professional duties and the ethical standards of the profession.

Point of View: Quality of Life Over Quantity

Legal Issues

With the exception of physician-assisted suicide laws and liability torts, there are no clear legal guidelines for end-of-life care in general (Pope, 2018). The principles of non-maleficence determine individual cases. However, physicians and other healthcare staff in the United States have been generally opting for life extension in all circumstances, even when doing so conflicts with patient wishes (Pope, 2018). High-profile cases like the Terry Schiavo...

Healthcare workers have recently been acting more out of fear of litigation than out of duty to care, duty to respect patient autonomy, and duty to respect patient dignity (Pope, 2018). From the perspective of providing compassionate and holistic care, nurses need to honor a patient’s wishes even if those wishes are to terminate life and to help patients embrace mortality with a sense of peace and acceptance.
Scope of Practice

Within the general scope of practice, end of life care issues arise in all healthcare settings but primarily in hospice and palliative care environments, including nursing homes. A survey of nine nursing home residents and their relatives showed that residents generally defer to relatives and staff and few have formal advanced care planning directives (Bollig, Gjengedal & Rosland, 2015). Healthcare administrators should start mandating advanced care planning directives to avoid legal and ethical conundrums. Moreover, offering patients the ability to plan helps them to psychologically contend with mortality, which can also improve relationships with family members. Extending life indefinitely and for no reason is not necessarily beneficence, just as physician-assisted suicide and passive euthanasia are not maleficence. As Hogsnes, Danielson, Norbergh,…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Respiratory Ethics Nursing Ethics in
Words: 1940 Length: 6 Document Type: Thesis

2008).. This points to the ethical responsibility of nurse educators -- it is not enough to treat the disease, bit one must treat the patient. Failure to provide the proper level of education to a patient is certainly one way to fail them both ethically and medically, bit the opposite can also be true. That is, it is possible to provide too much care -- what is deemed "medically futile

Life Support or Death With Dignity
Words: 1301 Length: 4 Document Type: Essay

Life Support vs. Dignity A decision is complicated not just by the people affected by it, but also by the people making the decision. For health care professionals, decision making is usually complex because of their role in providing care to patients and their families. One of the most difficult decisions for these professionals is scenarios involving life support or death. In these situations, health care providers work with the patient

Ethics and Advance Directives Ethics
Words: 3485 Length: 10 Document Type: Term Paper

According to this second view, contemporaneous autonomy trumps precedent autonomy because honoring precedent autonomy imposes preferences and values of a different person, the formerly competent self (Buccafumi, p. 14). The role that patient's families, doctors, health aides, pastors, chaplains and administrators, health educators and others play is crucial. Few people have executed an advanced directive, much less appointed a healthcare power of attorney by the time they enter a hospital

Ethics Project
Words: 4363 Length: 10 Document Type: Book Review

Life and Death: The Life Support Dilemma by Kenneth E. Schemmer M.D Kenneth Schemmer in his thorough, thought provoking book brings to life the controversial subject of the life support issue. For years, many all over the country have pondered, "What if a person were in some kind of an accident and the physicians told them that they were not going to make it?" And all that he or she

Ethical Theories in Nursing
Words: 4777 Length: 10 Document Type: Essay

Nursing Ethical Theories Ethical Theories in Nursing Significance of Moral in Nursing Deontology vs. Utilitarianism Deontology Utilitarianism Justice Ethics vs. Care Ethics Justice Ethics Care Ethics Rights Ethics Conflict of Rights Ethical Theories in Nursing Moral philosophy has moved from addressing Plato's question of what makes the good person, to Kant's query as to the right thing to do, to Buber's concern with relationship. Whether referring to business ethics' interest in relationships between corporations and consumers; legal ethics' focus on relationships among

Occupational Therapy Ethics
Words: 3195 Length: 10 Document Type: Essay

Ethics in the nursing and occupational therapy communities is an ongoing concern that is being addressed in a number of different arenas and manners. This paper discusses national and international frameworks that have been created to address, define and provide ethical behavior guidelines for the healthcare communities that comprise measured and timely responses to the ethics issue as it pertains to those communities. Specifically, the paper will look at ethical

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now