The point of nursing and medicine is to prolong life and improve the quality of life; it is not to lose lives because of excessive second guessing and insecurity.
Medical ethics, in a narrow historical or political sense, refers to a group of guidelines, such as the Oath of Hippocrates, generally written by physicians, about the physician's ideal relationship to his peers and to his/her patients. Medical ethics in the 21st century world has expanded and additionally refers to the application of general and fundamental ethical principles to clinical practice situations, including medical research, and in the increasingly expanding field of nursing.
Nursing has come to the forefront as a popular and vibrant professional around the world, continuing to gain attention and increasing numbers of undergraduates and graduates studying nursing. An additional change or occurrence in recent years is that the term "medical ethics" has been modified to biomedical ethics, which includes ethical principles relating to all branches of knowledge about life and health. Thus, fields supplemental to and indirectly related to the practice of medicine are included, such as nursing, pharmacy, genetics, social work, psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and the like. Changes in culture, developments in technology, shifts in attitude regarding the political-legal-social-economic links have all influenced professional nursing practice.
I believe patients are valuable...
Patients are not always simple or easy to deal with as a nurse, but this is an accepted risk of the profession. Patients are one of the highest priorities in the nursing practice. Of course it would excellent if everyone everywhere was always in perfect health, but this is not a reality. At some point, everyone needs or encounters a nurse for medical reasons. In this way, nurses need nurses and nurses need patients.
In the near future, I see nursing continuing to grow as an industry globally. I see nurses gaining respect for their work and their presence in the medical field. I also see nurses becoming a greater influence in medicine with regard to policy, law, procedure, and care.
In the more distance future, I see nursing becoming much more technologically advanced, requiring nurses to be much more skills, and having many more specialized skills. I see nurses taking a more complex role in procedures such as surgery and emergency care.
