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Nursing ethics is a branch of applied ethics that concerns itself with activities in the field of nursing. Nursing ethics shares many principles with medical ethics, such as beneficence, non-maleficence, and respect for autonomy. It can be distinguished by its emphasis on relationships, human dignity and collaborative care.
Boundaries are an integral part of the nurse-client relationship. They represent invisible structures imposed by legal, ethical, and professional standards of nursing that respect the rights of nurses and clients. [1] These boundaries ensure that the focus of the relationship remains on the client's needs, not only by word but also by law.
Medical ethics shares many principles with other branches of healthcare ethics, such as nursing ethics. A bioethicist assists the health care and research community in examining moral issues involved in our understanding of life and death, and resolving ethical dilemmas in medicine and science.
Ethical Attitudes and knowledge derived from an ethical framework, including an awareness of moral questions and choices. Aesthetic Awareness of the immediate situation, seated in immediate practical action; including awareness of the patient and their circumstances as uniquely individual, and of the combined wholeness of the situation.
Like medical ethics, nursing ethics is very narrow in its focus, especially when compared to the expansive field of bioethics. For the most part, "nursing ethics can be defined as having a two-pronged meaning," whereby it is "the examination of all kinds of ethical and bioethical issues from the perspective of nursing theory and practice."
A common framework used when analysing medical ethics is the "four principles" approach postulated by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in their textbook Principles of Biomedical Ethics. It recognizes four basic moral principles, which are to be judged and weighed against each other, with attention given to the scope of their application.
These can be the important questions that arise from current practices. With knowledge focus, nurses can question a current practice due to shared scientific knowledge. This knowledge can be in the form of research or national guidelines for example. With problem focus, nurses can find room for improvement from already existing facts.
US nurses have recited the pledge at pinning ceremonies for decades. In recent years, many US nursing schools have made changes to the original or 1935 versions, often removing the "loyalty to physicians" phrasing to promote a more independent nursing profession, with its own particular ethical standards. [3]