Ethics In Nursing Practice

Nurses have a great responsibility for patient’s health and wellbeing. Patients are the centre of professional nursing practice, therefore, is it important that nurses understand the legal, ethical and professional issues they will face in their career. Regulatory guidelines are what underpin the nurse’s decision making and safeguard both patient and the nurse. This assignment aims to discuss the principles and theories that assist a nurse’s moral judgement when faced with moral issues and to explore the legal and professional laws and guidelines that underpin them. To help illustrate the assignment and prevent the assignment from being abstract and disconnected from what nurses do in clinical practice, a scenario regarding Mr Smith will be

Consequentialists feel that the outcome of an action is more important that the action itself. According to the moral dilemma regarding Mr Smith, the MDT team have taken the consequentialist approach and decided that Mr Smith’s UTI needs to be treated because that would be maximising good, so Mr Smith’s rights of refusing treatment are, in this case, not morally relevant. Only the best foreseeable consequence of treating the UTI and alleviating all negative consequences of not having the IV antibiotics are morally important (Hope, Savulescu and Hendrick, 2008). Ellis (2013) weighs up the pros and cons of consequentialism and comes to the conclusion that it can be problematic in the sense it takes time, the outcomes are not well defined when using the consequentialist calculous. It is said by Hope et al., (2008) that utilitarianism is the predominant school of consequentialist thought. According to Ellis (2013) in 1781 Jeremy Bentham founded utilitarianism, he based his theories on moral calculous which states a decision was morally right if it maximised pleasure and minimised pain. This is known as act utilitarianism. One of the cons of act utilitarianism is that it is ineffective if used repeatedly in the same situation (Smart & Williams, 1973). Ellis (2013) then goes onto explain that act utilitarianism

These laws give the patient confidence in the care they are receiving These laws also The MDT are conflicted by two obligations as health professionals. The MDTs moral principle is to respect Mr Smith’s autonomy and the NMC code section 1.5 ‘states respect and uphold people’s human rights’, this would mean that Mr Smith’s decision to refuse the prescribed IV antibiotics should be respected and his human rights should be upheld. This section of the code conflicts with the action that would be beneficent in this situation which would be to give Mr Smith the IV antibiotics to treat the UTI, therefore preventing harm (septicaemia which could lead to death). The MDT have to decide which of the two principles take priority. The MDT are educated about the connection between UTIs and changes in mental state and confusion in older adults (Sacks, 2015), moreover the unwise decision to refuse treatment for his UTI has alerted the MDT to the need of assessing Mr Smith’s of capacity. The Mental Capacity Act (2005) (MCA) is a legal guidance on how mental capacity should be determined in such situations. This is one of many acts that safeguards nurses and other health profession. another act that is relevant to scenario is