NUR2320-Nursing Ethics and Legal Issues

Using the e-portfolio format, answer the following questions. Make sure you spend some time thinking about the answers to these questions before writing.

1. Please update your response to the following question, "What legal issues and structures must you personally and professionally be aware of to be a safe and competent nurse?"
2. Now at the end of the course what was the most important principle you learned and will always remember about maintaining professional boundaries? Did this change from your mid-course entry. If so, explain.
3. Please make a final list of your the professional and moral values and how they will guide your professional nursing practice.
4. What challenges do you think you may have with any of the legal or ethical areas discussed during this course when practicing as a professional nurse? How will you handle them?

One of the most important aspects that should be maintained by the healthcare professionals while providing care is confidentiality and privacy. Overriding the professional boundary may result in not only harmful impact on the patient but also results in cancellation of license and getting involved in legal obligation. Breaching the aspects may affect the personal life as well as professional lives of the patients that may expose them to violence, harassment, abuse, humiliation or attacks and many others (Parandeh et al., 2015). Often many of the nurses are seen to override their professional boundaries by enclosing information of patients over social media that leads to many legal obligations of professionals and breach in human rights of the patients. Hence, maintaining this principle within the professional boundary ensure safe and quality care to patients.

Professional values and morals:

Professional values mainly help in guiding the different practices of the nurses ensuring that the patients are not only satisfied with their care but that all the care services are following ethical and legal frameworks. Respecting human dignity, social justice as well as altruism is some of the values that ensure self less devotion to the patients. Autonomy in decision making as well as precision and accuracy in caring ensure that patients not only get high quality care but also can develop a trust on the professionals that have positive impacts on their emotional and mental health. Responsibility and inculcating effective traits to maintain human relationships are the ways by which nurses can develop therapeutic relationship with the patients (McCarthy & Gastmans, 2015). Mutual respect, trust and reliance along with caring for patients with love and kindness are some of the foundations of nursing profession. Sympathy, empathy, compassion, integrity and competency ensure professionals to develop bonding with patients that ensure compliance of the patients with the treatments and hence result in better quality care.

Challenges:

Healthcare professionals often face many incidences where they go through ethical dilemmas. These ethical dilemmas mainly rise from the conflict of the bio-ethical principles that include beneficence and autonomy. Autonomy instructs professionals to perform care services after consents from the patient and conducting the interventions according to the preferences and consents of the patients (Alkaya, Yaman & Simones, 2018). On the other hand, beneficence ensured professionals to provide care that are safest and have best health outcomes. Often there are many incidences where the care that is decided by the professionals to be of the best results is rejected by the patients that may create harm to them. Professionals have the duty to save lives but laws like advanced directives, “do not resuscitate” and many others often result in ethical dilemmas among the professionals thereby evolving as potential challenges in their fields of practice. I will try to apply proper critical thinking skills, ethics of justice, respect for patient’s autonomy and dignity and try to take decisions in the light of these factors. I will try to find evidence based articles to get over my dilemma and take suggestions and advice from seniors. All these would help me to take correct decisions and prevent myself from getting involved in any legal obligation

References:

Alkaya, S. A., Yaman, ?., & Simones, J. (2018). Professional values and career choice of nursing students. Nursing ethics, 25(2), 243-252.

Kangasniemi, M., Pakkanen, P., & Korhonen, A. (2015). Professional ethics in nursing: an integrative review. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(8), 1744-1757.

McCarthy, J., & Gastmans, C. (2015). Moral distress: A review of the argument-based nursing ethics literature. Nursing Ethics, 22(1), 131-152.

Parandeh, A., Khaghanizade, M., Mohammadi, E., & Nouri, J. M. (2015). Factors influencing development of professional values among nursing students and instructors: a systematic review. Global journal of health science, 7(2), 284.