Intervention and Ethical Decision Making Paper
Providing care to patients daily may at one point require the nurse to make a critical decision concerning the patient’s needs. The decision made by the nurse require to be fully based on codes and ethics of the profession. Ethical decision making in simple term is selecting the best alternative as per organizational and professional principles. There is a lot of controversy on who should choose the course of action between the client and the nurse and this paper is discuses in details and touches on factors that influence spiritual care.
Spiritual Care for Patients
Spiritual care and support should be provided to all patients for emotional and mental support. According to Gordon (2014), a nursing philosopher, human beings have 11 functional patterns that must be assessed and intervened. The value-belief pattern guides the client’s choices based on his/her values, and spirituals beliefs. Spiritual care is a modern ethical issue occasionally breached by differences in religion and the profession itself. Spiritual care and ethical decisions may contradict in many circumstances, therefore nurses have to be fully knowledgeable on how to maintain a therapeutic relationship. Spiritual care is effective when there is cultural competency. There are different cultures and
Determinants in Providing Spiritual Care
When it comes to matters concerning values, beliefs and religion. No man is perfectly equipped with enough knowledge on spiritual care, because it’s less concentrated on the curricula. One of the strength’s in providing spiritual care is the nurse being religious, this facilitates quick interventions to clients since it’s easy to identify spiritual needs. Christians make up the large percentage of the world and most likely a big number of patients from the Christian religion. Some of the ethics that guide and give strength, is providing care without trying to convince the client on your beliefs. “Mother Teresa cared for all types of people, Muslims, Indians and Christians and did not try make them believe in as she did” (Moorman 2015). During nursing practice, the care provided should be nondiscriminatory of culture, religion and race. The lack of mastery of culture and religions can influence decision especially when they are against patients will. Making assumptions is a weakness, they are made because a certain religion comes more often to the facility. It’s very important to maintain a therapeutic relationship and communication to prevent unethical practices.
Patients have the right to autonomy. This right gives them power of choice to the kind of treatment they accept or prefer. It’s an advantage to the patient but creates a conflict among nurses in professional obligation to provide care and ethical respect for patient’s autonomy and medical best interests (Paul-Emile et al, 2016).
Spiritual care is critical to patients having life-threatening illness. Diversities of culture and religions are a great challenge when it comes to spiritual care, this has contributed to negligence in that area. It’s a self-initiative for the Students and Nurses to put efforts to learn and understand their culture for proper intervention when giving holistic care. The nurse should never at any circumstance make decision that’s not supported by nursing codes ðics, it’s a sign of professionalism. In circumstances where the client has chosen a course of action, the nurse should remember to respect the patient’s right to autonomy. Therefore ethical decision making demands the use of professional decision-making process to prevent moral distress related to the decisions being made in the workplace and to enhance job satisfaction and proper care of the patients.
References
Beigbeder, Y. (2017). International Public Health: Patients’ Rights Vs. the Protection of Patents. Routledge.
Ellis, P. (2017). Understanding ethics for nursing students. Learning Matters.
Gordon, M. (2014). Manual of nursing diagnosis. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Moorman, S. (2015). Nursing from a Christian Worldview: Being Transformed to Care. Journal of Christian Nursing, 32(1), E1-E7.
Paul-Emile, K., Smith, A. K., Lo, B., & Fernández, A. (2016). Dealing with racist patients. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(8), 708-711.
