Assignment: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing
Assignment: Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing
Develop, in detail, a situation in which a health care worker might be confronted with ethical problems related to patients and prescription drug use OR patients in a state of poverty.
Your scenario must be original to you and this assignment. It cannot be from the discussion boards in this class or any other previous forum.
Articulate (and then assess) the ethical solutions that can found using “care” (care-based ethics) and “rights” ethics to those problems.
Assessment must ask if the solutions are flawed, practicable, persuasive, etc.
What health care technology is involved in the situation?What moral guidelines for using that kind of healthcare technology should be used there? Explore such guidelines also using utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, ethical egoism, or social contract ethics.
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Say how social technologies such as blogs, crowdfunding, online encyclopedias can be used in either case. What moral guidelines for using that kind of healthcare technology should be used there? Develop such guidelines also using utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, ethical egoism, or social contract ethics.
You should not be using any text you used in a discussion board or assignment for this class or any previous class.
Cite the textbook and incorporate outside sources, including citations.
Writing Requirements (APA format)
Length: 3-4 pages (not including title page or references page)
1-inch margins
Double spaced
12-point Times New Roman font
Title page
References page (minimum of 2 scholarly sources)
Grading
This activity will be graded based on the Assignment Grading Rubric.
A Sample Of This Assignment Written By One Of Our Top-rated Writers
Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing
Healthcare professionals often experience ethical dilemmas in the course of their duties. Most ethical dilemmas in nursing occur when two or more ethical principles seem to contradict; following one ethical principle will lead to non-adherence to the other. Events where a nurse has to choose between obeying one principle at the expense of the other, are extraordinarily complex, making them mind-taxing. In this paper, the author will present a typical ethical problem among patients in a state of poverty and analyze some practical solutions, technology, and moral guidelines practical for the scenario.
An immigrant woman in her early twenties approaches a nurse at a local public hospital’s reception requesting an abortion. Upon telling her that the facility is incapacitated to offer such services due to moral obligations, the woman outbursts a cry saying that she is a university student and keeping the pregnancy may lead to scholarship termination. She has been raised by a single mother who uses her menial salary from a coffee plantation in the village to support seven other children. This patient claims that she would have opted for a private hospital that offers abortion services, but she has no money to cater for the services. Therefore, this hospital is her last option for safe abortion.
The nurse has to decide whether or not to support the woman having an abortion. On the one hand, allowing abortion contradicts the justice principle. Everyone deserves a chance to live; thus, killing the fetus is an injustice. According to Natural Law Ethics, both the mother and the fetus have the right to life, making abortion morally reprehensible (Potter, 2018). The Utilitarian ethical theory would state that the woman should be allowed to abort as it will increase satisfaction among the involved parties (Potter, 2018). The woman would not be happy raising a child she did not want to birth. Therefore, allowing abortion would prevent future misery for the child, which often occurs when a parent is not financially and emotionally prepared for a child.
On the other hand, two probable scenarios may occur if the woman does not get abortion services. One, she may opt for unsafe abortion, which could lead to complications such as sepsis or, even worse, death. Two, she may keep the pregnancy, lose her scholarship and terminate her education. By doing so, the patient will have lost the chance to break the cycle of poverty and may resent and blame the child for the lost opportunity. According to Aristotle’s Golden Mean, the patient may choose to compromise her education, keep the pregnancy, and look for alternative means of livelihood. However, this reasoning may not best fit this case because education was the easiest and most guaranteed way of breaking the poverty cycle.
The best solution for this case would be to allow the patient to have an abortion. Individuals should seek to promote caring relationships based on the ethics of care. However, unwanted pregnancies do not represent mutual care, thus, lack moral value. Potter (2018) states that denying the woman’s bodily autonomy will lead to a coerced relationship between the mother and the child, which will not include genuine care. Additionally, allowing safe abortion upholds women’s right to bodily autonomy. In no other context does the law compel a person to give up their body integrity to save another, as with pregnancy. To some extent, this decision is flawed because the mother and nurse may not be able to handle the guilt associated with killing a fetus (Todd-Gher & Shah, 2020). Nonetheless, having an abortion remains the most practical solution to secure a woman’s future and end the cycle of poverty.
Healthcare technology involved in this situation includes ultrasound and vacuum aspiration. Ultrasound scanning facilitates enhanced early abortion care as it helps assess gestation and confirm whether the fetus has been completely evacuated. This technology also helps detect ectopic pregnancies, determine fetal viability, and confirm missed abortions (Wang et al., 2021). Vacuum aspiration is better than dilatation and curettage (D&C) in surgical abortions. Vacuum aspiration procedures have minimal complications, thus, reducing the need for pain management. Since this technology can be used in different ambulatory settings by a broader range of mid-level experts, the patient saves hospital admissions and general anesthesia costs. The nurse should apply Kantian deontology theory by allowing and describing the ultrasound image to the pregnant woman as required by law, without weighing the consequences (Wang et al., 2021). This moral guideline will prevent subjectivity and uncertainty as one has to only follow the rules.
Social technology, such as blogs and crowdfunding, can significantly help this ethical dilemma. If the patient chooses to keep the pregnancy, she can crowdfund to raise money for her education. Blogs provide reliable information on concurrently coping with parenthood and school work while mitigating the risk of mental health issues. In the case of abortion, crowdfunding may come in handy in raising money for her to receive the services from a private hospital and cater for aftercare (Solotke et al., 2020). The ethical egoism theory can be used to defend the stance. Everything people do is for their self-interest; abortion should not be an exception (Solotke et al., 2020). The blogs contain essential information on contraception, which will help avoid unwanted pregnancies in the future.
In conclusion, nurses encounter numerous ethical dilemmas in their work. The primary cause of the dilemma in the presented case is that the patient is poor and cannot cater for her education or safe abortion in a private hospital. The only practical solution, in this case, would be to help her get the services through crowdfunding. Overall, every choice made in this case has a consequence; the nurse has to decide which consequences they and the mother can live with.
References
Potter, R. Β. (2018). The abortion debate. In Reaction to the Modern Women’s Movement, 1963 to the Present (pp. 13-26). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203822364-4/abortion-debate-ralph-potter
Solotke, M. T., Faria, N. B., Karim, H., Roy, S., Ross, J. S., & Cron, J. (2020). Exploring crowdfunding campaigns for abortion services. Contraception, 102(1), 18-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.contraception.2020.02.008
Todd-Gher, J., & Shah, P. K. (2020). Abortion in the context of COVID-19: a human rights imperative. Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 28(1), 1758394. https://doi.org/10.1080/26410397.2020.1758394
Wang, M., Girgis, M., Cohen, S., & Lee, J. (2021). Complications of abortion and need for appropriate ultrasound assessment and peri‐abortion care. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 61(4), 607-611. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajo.13354