Ethical dilemmas are a daily part of life for most nurses. Using ethical principles such as beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, fairness, truthfulness, and respect for authority, most dilemmas can be solved with little outside help. However, in the face of controversy, one may need to seek an ethics committee to sort things out. Ethics committees are designed to resolve “unusual, complicated ethical problems involving issues that affect the care and treatment of patients within the health care institution” ("AMA," 1995-2016, para. 2). The expectations of patients, their families, and society in general are that “decisions about patient care, resources and therapeutic regimes should be soundly based on appropriate ethicolegal, as well as scientific, principle” (McLean, 2007). The authors of this paper have interviewed …show more content…
‘The purpose of all medical decisions is surely to provide the best service available in the interests of patients” (McLean, 2007). By interviewing individuals with different worldviews and philosophies, the authors of this paper simulated an ethics committee and obtained the desired help in deciding what to do. The interviewees were first given a set of questions designed by James Sire (Sire, 2015) to help determine one’s worldview. This was followed by questions from Uustal’s decision-making model to help solve the ethical dilemma. Uustal’s decision-making model was used because it uses the nursing process and includes values clarification (Grand Canyon University [GCU], 2011).
In the following paragraphs, the worldviews and philosophies of a spiritual leader, a health care administrator, a health care colleague, and a member of the community will be expressed. These worldviews and philosophies will be compared and contrasted, and an ethical decision will be made regarding whether or not the nurse should speak