Reflective Essay
Introduction
Nurses, along with other healthcare specialists, practice in a background that is swiftly changing due to skill, developments in medical science, and force to enclose charges. Due to the evolving healthcare setting, nurses have to decide where the legal consequences of their judgments are indefinite, and specialists vary in their views as to what institutes an ethical judgment in a specific situation. The related legal and ethical issues facing the nursing career comprise dealing with conflict in workstations, dealing with staffing scarcity, the applicable use of equipment in their workroom, and balancing the essential to offer care for patients with pressure to be more competent in the use of time and resource (Guido, 2013). Ethical judgments connected to justice regularly include the provision of scarce resources. An example of a moral dilemma that nurses face involves resource distribution in a hospital when staff has limited access to medicine and lifesaving apparatus. Surgeons and nurses face the ethical task of selecting which patients would get cured and which patients they would just make contented.
Nurses are ethically required to be dependable, just, and honest with their patients. Moreover, they also act as mediators for their patients. Although this obligation appears, at first, peek to be direct, families regularly appeal that nurses reserve information from their patients because of their anxiety that information about specific features of the patient’s state might have a bad impression of their recovery. In other cases, such as conflict, nurses also must set their individual belief systems away and reflect on whether the judgments they make are kind and comprise progressive actions to relieve their patients. Encounters nurses meet, they discover their opinions vary from those of their patients. An example of a legal matter may arise against nurses when they fail to act as patient mediators and follow the order of command or fail to use equipment in an accountable way, as stated above. The nurse has an obligation to the patient.
Case Issue
The case in a nursing home where an older person is suffocated by a caregiver who was captured by a hidden camera shows how unethical the nursing practice is. The video shows a nursing home attempting to suffocate an 89-year-old man. This led to the patient’s family suing the nursing home.
The legal issues involved in this case were negligence and abuse. Negligence and abuse were perpetrated by both the organization and its employees. This is a form of tort that gives the family the right to pursue damages in court against the nursing home. The nursing home bears the direct burden of the suit because they are responsible for the employees who work for them. Nursing home staff involved in the case were terminated from the facility, and criminal charges could be filed against them for committing such an offence and punished according to the decree by law.
Administrators, especially in nursing home settings, can first and foremost ensure that proper background checks are done on employees being hired. Ensuring the patient-to-staff ratio is kept at a level that does not overwhelm staff and encourages good patient care. Also, supervisors should be encouraged to use video surveillance for review as a tool to ensure that staff members are meeting organizational standards for patient care. Regular independent observers should be encouraged to evaluate the quality of care being given at the facility.
A corporate compliance program will help address this issue by setting a standard of practice for all nursing home facilities and ensuring that all the care facilities adhere to these standards. Although state parastatals license these nursing home facilities presently, adding a corporate compliance program will be an additional tool that will help to increase patient care at nursing home facilities.
Actions By Care Providers And Elderly To Prevent Abuse In Nursing Homes
Parental figures should offer help from offices and relatives, which could keep them from pushing. They should remain sound and take a medicinal look after themselves when basic. They ought to likewise look for advice for discouragement, which may ease the mishandled senior. The elderly in nursing homes ought to guarantee their legitimate and money-related undertakings are all together; this should upgrade their security (Cramer and Brady, 2013). If not all together, they should look for proficient help, with the assistance of their companions or relatives, when it is important. The elderly ought to dependably stay in contact with relatives and colleagues to avoid being confined. At the point when elderly people in nursing homes get cruel care, they ought to illuminate their relatives, companions, or somebody they trust. There ought to be a collaboration between senior individuals and care suppliers. It is exceptionally challenging to deal with a mature individual who has various prerequisites. At the same time, it is hard to be elderly as age accompanies its debilities and reliance. The two of these requests could create conditions for the manhandling to occur. The duties and requests of elderly individuals, as well as their circumstances, could be frightening to care suppliers. The strain of senior care could prompt physical and psychological wellness issues, which would make parental figures let go, and in this manner, they should look for guidance from qualified experts.
Routes On How To Report Caregiver And Elder Abuse
Notwithstanding the availability of obligatory revealing laws for senior mishandling, in numerous parts of the United States, countless senior individuals manhandled and disregarded in nursing homes go unnoticed and naturally consistently. Senior individuals, their watchmen, and parental figures ought to comprehend that they have surplus courses on the most proficient method to safely and effectively report manhandling and disregard in nursing homes. When one speculates on signs, he/she should make sure to document the signs (Kilbane and Spira, 2010). This may include taking snaps of wounds, accomplishing composed articulation by the senior citizen included, and getting insistence from a witness.
According to the principle of no maleficence, a patient should not harm the patient. The principle of no maleficence acts as an obligation for a nurse to protect his or her patients from harm by preventing or removing bad situations and promoting or encouraging the good (McGowan, 2012). In this case, promoting good situations would mean that nurses should respect the decisions of the patient and not disclose anything they get from them without their authorization or permission. No maleficence proscribes nurses from carrying out any action that will result in causing harm to the patient, and that entails protecting privacy and confidentiality.
This principle requires an intention to avoid injury or harm that may arise from acts of omission or commission. It can be considered negligence when a nurse imposes an unreasonable or careless risk of harm upon a patient. Harm can occur when confidential or private information is made known to individuals, and a patient would never have disclosed the information (Huston, 2013). This principle should always remind a nurse that the main concern when carrying out a task is never to harm the patient. The principles help build confidence and trust on the part of the patient, and they will believe that their problems are safe with a nurse (Cherry & Jacob, 2016). As a nurse, I think we must look to reduce as well as eliminate any actions that will make the patient lose confidence or trust in us. The ethical principle of justice refers to the idea that the moral duty to distribute risk, cost, and benefits should be done in a fair manner.
Bottom line, privacy and confidentiality ethical issues were a key factor as far as the foundation of nursing is concerned. A nurse should assess the situation of a patient in a unique way and exercise confidentiality at all times for the benefit of the patient. Protecting privacy and confidentiality has a remarkable significance from nurses’ and patients’ perspectives. Privacy and confidentiality should always be considered the right of a patient, and the nurse and other paramedic staff are responsible for protecting their patient’s personal and medical information. There is a need to incorporate ethical principles as far as privacy and confidentiality are concerned. Patient autonomy, justice, nonmaleficence, and beneficence are unpinning rights of privacy and confidentiality. Nurses should always protect a patient’s private information and embrace the value of confidentiality because that way, they can build trusted relationships with the patients. Healthcare providers, especially nurses, should be aware of to what extent they should share information that does not inhibit patients’ respect and dignity and cause a reason of discrimination and stigma.
References
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Cramer, E. P., & Brady, S. R. (2013). Competing values in serving older and vulnerable adults: Adult protective services mandated reporting, and domestic violence programs. Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect, 25(5), 453-468.
Kilbane, T., &Spira, M. (2010).Domestic violence or elder abuse? Why it matters for older women. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 91(2), 165-170.
Cherry, B., & Jacob, S. R. (2016). Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Huston, C. J. (2013). Professional issues in nursing: Challenges and opportunities. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
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