Grand Canyon University
Ethical Decision Making in Health Care
NRS-437V
Applying Ethical Frameworks in Practice
Within the nursing practice, confidentiality is crucial to form the nurse-patient relationship. Among the rights we are assured, privacy and confidentiality are considered paramount. It is the health care provider’s duty to ensure this right is respected and upheld. Knowing that they can trust their health care provider enables a patient to give thorough and accurate information in order to receive the best and most adequate care available. Betrayal of this trust can have severe implications on the patient’s health and mode of treatment. Because of this patient confidentiality has …show more content…
Ethical principles include nonmalfecience, beneficence and autonomy. Asking the questions, “who will ultimately be harmed by the decision?” (malfecience), “who will ultimately benefit from the decision?”(beneficence), and “will the decision take away the patient’s own freedom of choice?”(autonomy). Using these principles can assist the provider in weighing the good versus bad of the situation in order to determine which decision is the correct and most ethical. Ethical rules can also be assessed in order to determine the best avenue, which include confidentiality, honesty and professionalism which in turn are linked to ethical principles. Understanding that ethics are morality are intricately intertwined can assist the decision to break confidentiality and the best course of action. Facing an ethical dilemma requires that all possible alternatives and options should be explored and studied in order to make the best and most ethical decision. In my opinion, the decision to inform the school of the patient’s and other school children’s sexual activities was not a valid use of ethical reasoning. “We successfully engage ethical reasoning when we not only recognize that x is good and y is bad but when we articulate reasons for why x is good and y is bad”(Doherty,2011). …show more content…
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Retrieved From: http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/ OJIN/TableofContents/Volume102005/No2May05/tpc27_116017.html