Ethical Dilemmas in the Nursing Profession

• Ethical dilemmas in nursing Scott Quinn Photography/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images

  Nursing is a demanding job, and sometimes, nurses are faced with the extra burden of moral and ethical dilemmas that can cause stress both inside and outside of the workplace. Nurses should be well aware of the ethical dilemmas that will likely face them on a daily basis in their roles before they enter the nursing industry.

Patient Care

• Nurses work in teams with doctors, radiographers and many other medical care professionals. At times, professionals in the workplace have a difference of opinion. This is usually the case in the instance of determining the best way forward for patient care when a particular patient is concerned. Nurses need to develop the foresight to predict a possible dilemma before it occurs and ready themselves to deal with any fallout and argument that may ensue when questions of patient care arise.

Religious Beliefs

• Nurses deal with patients of all shapes and sizes. These patients all have different spiritual and religious needs as well. Nurses face the dilemma of performing their duties as a nurse, while juggling the religious beliefs and respecting the religious concerns of their patient and their patient's families. At some stages, nurses need to receive special advice about certain procedural conduct (IE blood transfusions) when it comes to treating patients with particular religious backgrounds.

Pain Management

• Nurses spend a lot of their time managing the pain that their patients are feeling as a result of their illness or injury. Nurses need to balance their care requirements as a medical professional and the expectations and pain thresholds of their patients. There is enough medicine around for patients to feel little to no pain these days while undergoing most medical procedures, but there is also an ethical line that needs to be drawn by nurses when managing pain drugs and patient expectations of drug administration.

Dignity

• Nurses find that their role often has a lot to do with ensuring the quality of life and dignity of their patients. For example, a critically ill patient who is being changed in bed would usually, if they were well enough to direct the nurse, expect that their privacy be maintained as much as possible throughout this procedure. Nurses must do everything in their power to keep the dignity and privacy of their patients intact at all times.

Information Sharing

• Nurses and doctors take an oath of patient confidentiality when they start out in the industry -- as do many other medical professionals. This confidentiality extends to sharing only necessary information with visitors, other family members and the patients themselves and is based on the advice of the treating doctor or consultant. At some times, this may become an ethical dilemma for nurses, in which case they are best to first discuss their dilemma with their nurse unit manager before taking action to relieve their ethical burden.