Nursing Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Nursing Ethics - Essay Example Every professional nurse should have a clear understanding of her nursing philosophy and values, professional requirements and responsibilities. All aspects of nursing (e.g. education, practice, management and research) have a profound ethical dimension. The ethical and moral dimension is distinguished from other dimensions of nursing by the inherent moral demands. Quality assurance has become a leading goal of health care delivery, the effect of public alarm over the high cost of care and the aim of offering the best care. The concept of caring is one of the most important and unique because it goes back to ancient times and determines the nature of nursing profession. The term caring means "nurturing and loving support of a person" (Yoder-Wise 2005, p. 7). The concept of nursing that has been evolving throughout the ages has not yet reached its fullest maturity. It continues to grow and develop to include widening spheres of nursing service and practice and expanding functions. Nursing has its origin in the mother-care of helpless infants and must have coexisted with this type of care from earliest times. Frequently this referred to a woman who suckled a child who was not her own, that is, a wet nurse. The maternal instinct provided that strong impulse or motive necessary to care for those who were suffering or helpless. Consequently, the nurse as a loving mother who intuitively comforts and renders care continues to be a popular image (Burns and Grove 2005). The parental instinct more accurately des cribes this strong motive and is present in both sexes of all races and within different age-groups. This concept reflects individual-nurse relations and importance of strict values and moral rules in this profession (Yoder-Wise 2005). The ethical and moral dimension is a care of nursing profession. Healthcare ethics is based on philosophical ideas go back to ancient time. Philosophy, no less than medicine, was transformed in the early modern period under the impact of science, and researchers might see the existence of "moral philosophy" as such as consequent on the cultural changes brought about by the scientific revolution. Introducing as they did a comprehensive secular version of the world, the modern sciences created a demand for a secular version of the ethical doctrines previously encoded within religion. This dimension is closely connected with concepts of health and wellbeing, an individual and society. Values are defined as 'broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others' (Thomasma 2004, p. 8). Ethics means 'a set of moral and ethical principles which determine right and wrong actions' (Thomasma 2004, p. 10). For a nurse, medical ethics raises the question of how her activities affect the behavior of individuals and the values of society, and concerns important ethical questions about the role of medical staff in the management process and healthcare delivery. Heifetz explains ethics as a mixture of morals, customs and values, and laws: Moral issues arise whenever human action or inaction affects others. Customs and values reflect the moral underpinning of a society. Morality speaks to what is right or wrong in human relationships, how we should treat others and how others ought to treat us,