In any institution, there are professional ethics that bind employees. The health department however, has been on the forefront in ensuring that ethics are highly adhered to. The ethics includes a nurse being a moral agent, but is not limited to extending the same to others in respect to their moral levels. Nurses provide crucial support to the patients to help improve the quality of their lives hence, the need of high levels of professionalism and ethics. Health Care Professionalism plays a crucial role especially in ensuring professional practices are achieved in the department through hiring managers to help coordinating the care. This paper reflects and explains various ethical principles that should influence a nurse professionally and personally as well as the ethical practices of professional nursing.
The following codes of ethics are fundamental guidance for the nurses and are divided into five parts: Nurses and people, nurses and the profession, nurses and practice, nurses and co-workers and nursing and education. The codes set out in each part enable the nurses to make ethical decisions. It also acts as a reminder for the nurses of the valuable state of their profession while providing direct care to their clients hence the need for quality of practice. The code also entails the essence of the nurses in respecting the individual dignity because they not only deal with patients but also with their family and other healthy people in the society.
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They are also supposed to recognize and respect cultural diversity in their daily activities due to globalization. They should also be aware of the ethical challenges they are exposed to maintaining professional responsibility and accountability. They also need to keep their patients’ information confidential to build trust. Finally, the principles state the administrative duties of the nurses concerning how they should communicate with other people for better decision-making and for better collaboration others.
In addition to that the following principles should be considered by nurses in the nursing department; promote the awareness of professional rules and ethical guidelines as well as respecting in order to act as pacesetters for the others. They should have the act of accountability and responsibility because they deal with patients’ lives that need care and support. Again, they need to be full of compassion and kindness in order to improve the communities’ health and be able to leverage their objectivities.
They should also be continuously improving their scientific and practical competence due to the era of globalization through constant education and research in various fields, nursing training fields. They should make efforts to enhance their expertise and fully participate in research projects. They should also be devoted in their professional obligations- they are not supposed to convince the patients to engage in any research without their will but rather should sympathise with their situations and help them recover rightfully.
They should ensure that there is justice in their services, when offering services to the patients they should serve all patients equally regardless of their race, gender, age or their political but rather be able to fully support them in their endeavours. This will also be supported by keeping the patients records as private, commitment to confidentiality.
The nurses should therefore familiarise themselves with the Codes of Ethics in the health profession and understand their significance in their daily practices in order to understand their professional responsibilities while attending to the patients
Finally, Nurses are encouraged to refer to the ANA’s scope and standards of practice for correction nursing and to their state’s nurse practice act in addressing practice issues. Regardless of the method, the nurse has a legal and ethical obligation to respond to the request for care. In general, the nurse should see the patient to evaluate health needs and determine the level of care required. If the communication is from the officer to the nurse, the nurse has a responsibility to speak to the inmate. A face-to-face discussion would be best, but the nurse could also first speak with the inmate by phone, making sure to ask the right questions, and then determining if the inmate should be moved to the medical unit or if the nurse should go to the inmate’s housing area.
References
The Code of Ethics for Nurses. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712593/
NMBI - Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nmbi.ie/Standards-Guidance/Code
Holland, S. (2010). Scepticism about the virtue ethics approach to nursing ethics. Nursing Philosophy , 11 (3), 151-158. doi:10.1111/j.1466-769x.2010.00433.x
