Today our topic of discussion is Ethical Dilemmas.
Ethical Dilemmas
A dilemma is defined as situations requiring a choice and between two equally desirable or undesirable alternatives. In ethical dilemma, each alternative course of action can be justified by two ways in which a person views the course of action based on his or her value system.
Issues in healthcare delivery practices present different alternatives based on whether the issue or course of action is viewed by the patient, the healthcare agency, the legal system or the nurse. Increasingly, staff nurses and nurse managers face difficult decisions caused by tensions between technological capabilities, budgetary structures, and quality of life concerns. Nurses in all clinical and functional specialties face the following ethical dilemmas:
- Need to ratio patient care to conserve scarce resources
- Need to make treatment and care decisions for terminally ill patients
- Need to obtain patients informed consent for care and decision. treatment orders and measures such as:
–Do not resuscitate order
–Withholding/withdrawing nutrition and fluids
–Starting/discontinuing life support system
- Response to patient request for assisted suicide
- Need to protect autonomy rights of children and process incompetent adults concerning consent for research the implementation
- Needs for protection from unreasonable risk
- Need to protect justice rights of patients who participate in random trials of experimental treatment.
- If not, a second decision may be required and process must start again at the initial.
Usually the dilemma occurs when opposing views are step. seen for the solution of an issue and a decision must be made. Another exchange of traditional model of ethical There is no set of procedures or easy answers for how an ethical dilemma should be resolved.
Ethical decision making is needed in all steps of the nursing process and all phases of Gather data to analyze the causes and consequence of the nursing management process. Ethical reasoning is similar to the nursing process in that it requires critical thinking skills.
A nurse can best resolve ethical dilemma, by systematically considering all options for solving the dilemma. An ethical dilemma occurs as a result of conflict between moral principles that support different courses of action.
Read more: