The consideration of ethical issues is an essential component of providing care within the therapeutic nurse-client relationship. Nurses may encounter ethical situations in their everyday practice. HOW AS A NURSE WOULD YOU ACHIEVE THIS?
Understanding and communicating the clients’ beliefs and values, as well as their own, helps nurses recognize ethical conflicts and work through them if they do occur.
VALUES
• Are formed from an early age and are learned.
• Influencing factors:
•
o Family, friends, educators
o The socio-cultural environment a person lives in
o Life experiences
o Religion
o Mass media
o
social media: facebook, twitter, instagram
VALUE FORMATION
• Personal and professional values can be transmitted
•
o eg. you learn personal values from family, friends, peers, life experiences
o eg. you learn professional nursing values from clinical and classroom experiences, teachers, nurses
Values Transmission
Values Clarification
involves deliberate examination of one’s thoughts, beliefs, feelings, physical and emotional responses to others and situations.
Reflection
• Reflection involves deliberate examination of one’s thoughts, beliefs, feelings, physical and emotional responses to others and situations.
• It requires honesty with self:
• What are my core values and beliefs and how did I get them?
• What are my biases about others and how did I get them?
• Does my behaviour – physical and emotional responses - express what I truly believe? If not, how can I change this?
Dialogue with others is helpful. It helps you:
• Articulate your point of view
• Hear and understand others’ points of view and gain a sense of their values
• Realize there are different ways of understanding the same thing
Values Clarification
Effective dialogue
Values clarification helps you?
• Ethical relationships require us to be fully aware of our own values and beliefs
• Every person has their own understanding of a situation. We need:
•
o To know why we react and feel the way we do in a given situation
o To know what “pushes our buttons” and why
o To be open to other people’s ways of understanding the same thing
Self-Awareness
Professional Values
Professional Values
Institutional Values
Marrying Personal and Professional Values
Values Conflict
Helping Clients Clarify Values
. The CNO has identified 7 values as being most important in providing nursing care in Ontario, LIST THE SEVEN VALUES
CLIENT WELL-BEING CLIENT CHOICE PRIVACY & CONFIDENTIALLY RESPECT FOR LIFE MAINTAINING COMMITMENTS TRUTHFULLNESS FAIRNESS
health and welfare, and preventing or removing harm.
eg. keeping the bed low and call bell in reach
eg. keeping pain under control
Eg. health teaching
eg. putting slippers on client’s feet to prevent slipping
o client well-being
right to the information necessary to make choices, and right to consent and right to refuse care
eg. right to know diagnosis to choose course of treatment
eg. respecting a client’s right to choose lifestyle choices, such as diet, smoking, or substance abuse
o client choice
limited access to a person, the person’s body, conversations, bodily functions or objects immediately associated with the person.
important aspects of privacy need to be identified by individual clients
eg. all things said within client interview should be kept between physician, nurse and client
eg. closing the curtains
eg. not talking about someone in the halls
o privacy and confidentiality
human life is precious and needs to be respected, protected and treated with consideration
considerations of the quality of life
eg. pain control
eg. respecting dnr
eg. providing comfort measures for palliative patients
o respect for life
obligation to maintain the commitments they assumed as regulated health professionals.
maintaining commitments means keeping promises, being honest and meeting implicit or explicit obligations toward their clients, themselves, each other, the nursing profession, other members of the health care team and quality practice settings.
eg. providing pain medication on a regular schedule, or whenever client is in pain and able to receive more medication
o maintaining commitments
speaking or acting without intending to deceive.
also refers to providing enough information to ensure the client is informed.
omissions are as untruthful as false information
eg. not giving false information or false promises
o truthfulness
allocating health care resources on the basis of objective health-related factors
eg. not playing favourites
o fairness