Nursing Ethics

Nurses support and enable individuals, families and groups to maintain, restore or improve their health status. Nurse also care for and comfort when deterioration of health has become irreversible. A traditional ideal of nursing is caring and nurturing of human beings regardless of race, religion, status, age, gender, diagnosis, or any other grounds.

Nursing care is based on the development of a helping relationship and the implementation and evaluation of therapeutic processes. Therapeutic process includes health promotion, education, counseling, nursing interventions and empowerment of individuals, families or groups. It helps individuals make choices in regards to their health care.

Nurses are independent moral agents and sometimes they have a personal moral conflicts that makes them uncomfortable with participating in certain procedures. Nurses have a moral obligation to the profession, but they are morally entitled to refuse to participate in procedures which would violate their moral beliefs. Nurses accepting positions where they maybe called on to go against their own moral beliefs, should inform their employer. Their employer and their coworkers have a responsibility to ensure that they’re not discriminated against.

Nursing practices is present in a variety of settings. Any setting can be affected by factors which are not within a nurse’s control or influence. These include resource constraints, institutional policies, management decisions, ...