Guantanamo Bay Case Study

All nurses work under a code of ethics. Ethics describe what nurses “should or “ought to do” when encountering opposing problems. Nurses also have to follow many laws that effect nursing practices. Guantanamo bay is a United States Naval base that hold terror suspects since January 2002. Force feeding of these detainees has been a major issue at Guantanamo Bay for ethical and legal reasons.

The Background

For the past six years the American Nurses Association has been overseeing the force feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Detainees have been engaging on hunger strikes for several reasons, one of these reasons include having an ongoing hopelessness over indefinite detention. Another reason includes religion, especially during Ramadan. On July 15, 2014, the Miami Herald reported that “a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties ”(). The American Nurses Association stood behind the Navy medical officers decision to not force feed detainees at Guantanamo Bay. This Naval Officer happens to be a Registered Nurse. This nurse refused

The force feeding of these detainees is not very humane. Force feeding often consisted of restraining the detainee and placing a nasogastric tube and feeding the detainees that way. The detainees best legal stance may be that forced feeding violates international law. "While enteral feeding is solidly supported under United States federal law and policy, international law and certain medical ethical standards holds that the 'forced feeding' of a mentally competent person capable of making an informed decision is never acceptable," states the very last paragraph in the legal guidance prepared by United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which has oversight of JTF-GTMO (Leopold, 2015). There is a vast difference of opinion related to if international law forbids the forced feeding of hunger strike detainees at Guantanamo