Welcome to Essay For All, where our professional tutors will serve you with professional and top-notch Legal & Ethical Principles in Healthcare assignment help solutions. Ethics is equally vital in healthcare as in any other business organization; it helps guide nurses and other health practitioners on what is right and wrong and hence helps in making quality and ethical decisions. Ethics in healthcare benefits not only patients but also health practitioners.
Based on our professional tutors, ethical principles in healthcare help healthcare providers identify healthcare dilemmas and make good judgments. The lack of ethical principles in the health sector will likely result in chaos and complaints. That is why nursing students must understand the ethical principles that guide nurses’ professional practice. Get deeper insights and related ethical principles in health homework help services from our reputable tutors.
The importance of ethical principles in health
Healthcare givers always handle many critical health-related duties, some of which require making sensitive decisions assessing the practitioner’s morality and professionalism. The decisions made by caregivers are always limited by the existing ethical guidelines, which require the nurses to ensure equal treatment of patients, among other requirements. There are various benefits of complying with the ethical principles guiding nurses’ practice, which include;
- Supports the provision of compassionate care
- Preserves patient confidentiality
- Helps in the evaluation of solutions and outcomes
- Effective ways of handling ethical dilemmas
- Supports the improved ability to ensure quality patient care services
The nursing code of ethics
Nurses have a standard code of ethics that helps guide them when performing their professional responsibilities. Some of the ethical principles to be adhered to by nurses include;
- Autonomy
- Fidelity
- Justice
- Accountability
- Nonmaleficence
- Beneficence
- Veracity
- Informed consent
Nonmaleficence
In nursing ethics, nonmaleficence is the responsibility of a health practitioner not to harm a patient. Some ways to avoid causing harm are not inflicting pain or suffering, not killing, avoiding causing offense, or depriving a patient of some goods of life. In nursing, various treatment options may apply to a particular health condition. Therefore, the nurse should consider an option that is effective and has less or no harmful health effects on the patient.
Beneficence
The caregiver must act for the benefit of the patient. Nurses should do what is good and also right for the patient. The moral obligation entails removing any possible condition that can harm the patient, preventing potential harm, safeguarding and protecting the patient’s rights, and helping patients with disabilities.
Confidentiality
Healthcare providers are not required to reveal any confidential information received from a patient without the patient’s permission. If the patient authorizes sharing the information, the physician can share only relevant data concerning the patient’s medical information with other health practitioners.
There is very confidential information surrounding the patient’s health condition that they may not want to be shared with any other third party. Some cases include partner notification of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, or gunshot wounds. If a healthcare giver leaks such information to their colleagues in the organization, then if the patient realizes the leakage, they are likely to sue the physician.
Informed consent
When attending to a patient, there are areas where the nurse must receive the patient’s consent to perform certain activities or procedures or even to make certain decisions. It helps to ensure that the nurses never infringe on the personal values or beliefs of the patient. For instance, if the patient’s medical condition requires a surgical procedure or specific medication, the nurse should share the information with the patient, educate them on the benefits and risks of the undertaking and allow them to decide what they want. Informed consent helps in promoting voluntary actions. If the patient is minor or mentally ill, health practitioners can seek the consent of their close family members.
Autonomy
Autonomy is an essential ethical principle suggesting that people or patients have intrinsic and unconditional worth and hence should be allowed to make moral and rational decisions. The principle gives the patients the ability or freedom to decide what should be done to their bodies. That is why the patient can decline when the recommended medical procedure seems to have a devastating impact on the patient. Get our ethical principles in health assignment help notes for more nursing ethics.
Ways through which nurses can avoid common ethical violations
Not speaking concerning safety.
Among the core ethical responsibilities of nurses is ensuring patient safety at all times. However, there are cases whereby the nurses may be tempted to share among themselves some patient information not for medical reasons and without the consent of the patient. While a patient is at a given medical center, nurses must ensure, by all means, they maintain the patient’s safety. If a nurse knows of some safety concerns, they should report them to the necessary authority to avoid repeating such cases.
That is why it is always critical for healthcare organizations to have proper communication channels to facilitate such reporting and ensure action is taken. However, nurses have always found it challenging to report some ethical misconduct of their colleagues, considering it an ethical dilemma. To understand professional ways of promoting patient safety in hospitals, seek our online ethical principles in health assignment help services.
Allow interference of patient’s personal beliefs with patient care.
There are various cultural values, principles, and personal beliefs that patients may hold onto when receiving medical attention. Some of them are likely to affect the required medical care delivery process as they may conflict with the patient’s religious beliefs. For instance, a patient may walk into the hospital with a pregnancy that, when allowed to full-term, may pose a significant risk to the health of the unborn and the mother.
If the only way of saving a life is abortion, there are chances that the patient will decline the decision because their religious beliefs and values condemn abortion. In this case, the doctor should not force abortion but accept the patient’s decision. Though technology has led to various revolutions in healthcare delivery, not everyone is receptive to new treatments, such as invasive and noninvasive surgical procedures, certain medications, and vaccines.
Withhold information
Nursing is a critical career whereby the service is not limited to patients but also family members. The health of the patient remains to be a family concern. In this case, the common ethical dilemma nurses face is disclosing certain information or concealing the information from the family members. The challenge is always based on how beliefs and values always differ from one family to the other.
In this case, nurses should take the role of educator, which is their ethical and moral obligation to educate patients on the different dimensions of their health. While there is some critical information, especially about the results from performed tests and diagnoses, that is not easy to share; nurses should ensure they build trust with patients to make it easy to address such ethical dilemmas. Nurses should also engage the patient’s family to inform and educate them about various things concerning the patient.
Privacy violations
Based on our ethical principles in health assignment helpers, HIPAA laws exist to protect health consumers from breaching or exposure of their personal health information. That is why nursing students must understand ways of protecting patients’ personal or sensitive information. Most patient medical information is stored in electronic health records, whereby most operations are automated.
Close monitoring and effective management of electronic health records are essential in supporting the privacy and safety of patient information. Some healthcare organizations adopt privacy screens to help minimize the visibility of passwords and patient charts. Successful healthcare organizations have made patient privacy among their leading priorities. Since data breaches or leaking patient sensitive information to the wrong parties violates the HIPAA law, awareness of safety and privacy concerns and regulations and their compliance is a way nurses can avoid ethical violations.
Types of ethical problems that are popular in healthcare practice
Based on Essay For All Tutors, nurses face three main classifications of ethical problems in their professional practice. The issues include ethical dilemmas, ethical violations, and ethical distress.
Ethical distress
Ethical distress happens when medical practitioners encounter obligations of practices that may trigger feelings of distaste, concern, or guilt. Not all healthcare services are pleasing and of comfort to the caregiver. Some are more offensive and may be against one’s beliefs and values. Hence, when a nurse lacks an alternative in this case, the outcome of their practice is ethical distress.
Ethical dilemma
An ethical dilemma happens when a nurse must choose between competing values while comparing the consequences of the decisions. Ethical dilemmas mostly conflict with the nurse’s code of ethics or the nurses’ personal values.
Ethical violations
According to our ethical principles in health homework doers, ethical violations entail negligence of moral obligations by a nurse. Some nurses fail to administer their moral obligation to a patient or client for different reasons, including personal inconvenience.
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