Professionals in nursing get faced with several ethical and legal issues in the course of carrying out their practice. Nurses experience different kinds of stress in their practice environment when dealing with different medical circumstances. Moral distress is a situation that occurs when a nurse gets confronted with two conflicting principles of ethics. For example, deciding between acting upon the patient’s wishes and what the nurse knows to be the best thing to do for the patient. This paper aims to discuss the ethical dilemmas with regard to moral distress and determination of rights.
Nurses’ Response to the Physician’s Request
In responding to the request of the physicians to the nurses for them to talk to the family of the patient about the transfer of the patient to another facility. The nurses are bound to experience uncertainty in their morals in which they are unsure about what the right course of action is based on the sentiments of the family and the patient’s medical history. The patient’s condition seems hopeless to the extent that she no longer recognizes family who as such, intended to stop visiting her. However, the nurses can follow the instructions of the physician, but the final decision gets made by the family since the patient lacks capacity.
Link to Moral Distress among the Nursing Staff
The nursing staff in the scenario would begin experiencing initial moral distress based on the fact that the physician and the family of the patient have different opinions of what should be done and the burden lies on the nurses to decide whose instructions to follow. The family of the patient have voiced their concerns on what the patient would have wanted with regard to the use of the ventilator support, which, according to them, the patient would never have accepted.
Trying to convince the family to transfer the patient for advanced treatment with instructions from her primary physician would cause significant distress to the nursing staff because they would be caught between what the patient’s family want and what the physician thinks is right for the patient (Campbell et al., 2018). The physician has his reasons just like the patient’s family do, and as such, trying to convince the family otherwise would be a stressful task for the nurses.
Positive Actions that the Nurses Might Begin to Take to Prevent Moral Distress
Medical studies present several actions that the nurses in this kind of stressful scenarios can begin taking in a bid to manage moral distress. They may start by voicing their ethical concerns, which is something that should be allowed in their practice environment as this will allow them to cope better with such situations in future thus minimize the possibility of them experiencing moral distress (Guido, 2014). Raising their ethical concerns will help them to cope better with situations when they experience moral distress.
The orientation programs for new nursing employees should include use of experts in ethics to provide them with information concerning moral distress to be discussed in settings that are neutral to educate them on identifying, understanding as well as making use of the available resources in the organization to prevent moral distress.
Some of these resources may include making use of the services for counselling to help them understand what moral distress entails and how to manage it in the course of their practice (Lachman, 2016). The nurses can also begin by asking the healthcare organization to provide intervention programs for nurses to help them reduce moral distress.
Compelling Rights Addressed by this Case
This case addresses some rights that are compelling, with the most significant being the right to refuse treatment. After the nurses and physicians have exercised veracity by telling the patient the whole truth about his condition, then providing options for treatment and the expected outcomes, the patient is allowed to exercise his right to accept or refuse treatmen
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