Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing

This nursing assignment delves into various ethical dilemmas encountered in practice. It examines a scenario involving a colleague's medication error, explores the impact of cultural context on patient care, and analyzes conflicting values between professional commitment and personal relationships. The student discusses relevant ethical codes and guidelines while ultimately prioritizing patient safety and well-being.

Running head: ETHICAL GUIDELINES
ETHICAL GUIDELINES
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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ETHICAL GUIDELINES
Question 1:
After my colleague revealed the situation, the first concern that I had was the health of the
patient at that moment. Although, my colleague stated that the low dose of medication did not
affect him, I was concerned whether he would develop any health issues later. This is because
many medications do not pose immediate side effects but may affect the patient later.
Question 2:
The ethical dilemma was that the patient’s health was at risk due to wrong medication of the
drug by the colleague who had thereby conducted an unsafe practicing. This had exposed the
patient’s life to risks. Therefore, this needs to be reported as a nursing professional should report
any unethical and unsafe practice (Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen, 2015). On the other
hand, the colleague had trusted him and had told him about the mistake he had conducted. He
had requested not to open it up to anyone. Therefore, he should also keep the faith of the
colleague by not disclosing it. This was the ethical dilemma as I could not understand which
option I should go for.
Question 3:
In the scenario, the client’s cultural context is not known. However, cultural diversity can have
implications in medication safety. In this scenario, the patient is taking medication as she has the
high expectation that her health issues will be cured. However, due to nurse’s mistake, the
effectiveness of medication might have been hampered which might change client’s culturae
values and beliefs towards medication safety. Therefore, nurse should have informed client
regarding her mistake to maintain their expectation towards health care system. The patient

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should know what had happened with him, as he possesses the human rights to be informed
about his health status or any factor that is a risk to their health (Hadjistavropoulos et al., 2016)
Question 4:
My nursing philosophy holds patients rights, autonomy, dignity and satisfaction as the prior
elements. Secondly, I believe in working collaboratively with the team members ensuring that I
can support and help everyone to achieve their best practice. Both of my personal values were
conflicting with each other in the present situation.
Question 5:
Two nursing ethical values, which are in questions in this situation, is “Commitment to client”
and “commitment to nursing colleagues”. My duty was to maintain safe practice to patient and
disclose all information regarding his health and treatment. My duty was also to maintain
cohesiveness in my relationship with my colleague and keep his trust for better relationship
development and effective teamwork. However, as per the guidelines of College of Nursing
Ontario, I should focus myself in maintaining my responsibility to client primarily and need to
take action against him when he had put the patient’s life at risks (Cno.org, 2009).

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References:
Cno.org. (2018). Ethics. [online] Available at:
https://www.cno.org/globalassets/docs/prac/41034_ethics.pdf [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].
Hadjistavropoulos, T., Malloy, D. C., Douaud, P., & Smythe, W. E. (2016). Ethical orientation,
functional linguistics, and the codes of ethics of the Canadian Nurses Association and the
Canadian Medical Association. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research Archive, 34(2).
Kangasniemi, M., Pakkanen, P., & Korhonen, A. (2015). Professional ethics in nursing: an
integrative review. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(8), 1744-1757.