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Introduction
The nursing profession presents nurses with ethically complex situations on a daily basis. The need to resolve these situations places an additional emotional strain on employees and can lead to flawed decisions. The following paper is a review of a study by Park (2009) that identifies the most common ethical issues in nursing practice and the respective strategies used to resolve them effectively.
Issues
The study by Park (2009) identifies several ethical issues that can be grouped into three broad categories patient care issues, end-of-life treatment decisions, and human rights issues. One of the most frequent patient care issues was the specificities of nursing staffing that resulted in patients being unable to receive proper nursing care. Similarly, inadequate allocation of resources had an effect on access to nursing care.
Next, the personal conflicts between patients, nurses, and doctors created additional ethical concerns. The human rights category included the concerns associated with possible risk to nurses, health during the treatment process, the necessity to protect human dignity and patients rights, and the issues associated with informed consent to treatment. Finally, the end-of-life treatment decisions revolved around the conflicts of interest between patients families and the medical consensus, the necessity to act against the personal religious views and cultural values (both nurses and patients), the emotional implications of treating a severely ill or disabled child, and the considerations of patients quality of life (Park, 2009).
Strategies
The most common approach to resolving the issue was the use of personal values in an attempt to rule out the ethically acceptable solution. Next, nurses often reported the positive effect of discussing the issue with their peers. Some of the respondents included discussions with higher administrative authority as a plausible solution. Consultation with the ethics committee was considered of minor importance, with only one study assigning it statistically significant effect (Park, 2009). Finally, nursing education was considered useful for decreasing the occurrence of conflict situations by most nurses.
Conclusion
Ethical issues are a major source of stress and emotional pressure in nurses. It is thus necessary to gain a better understanding of the issue in order to address it successfully. The findings of the study by Park (2009) provide valuable insight into the issue and can be used to raise awareness among RNs and equip them with feasible strategies for nursing practice.
Reference
Park, M. (2009). Ethical issues in nursing practice. Journal of Nursing Law, 13(3), 68-77.
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