Ethical Issues in Nursing Practice

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO NURSING
Introduction to nursing
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

INTRODUCTION TO NURSING2
Nurses are the frontline health professionals who are responsible for best care given to
the client within professional barriers. In order to provide care, nurses are require to use diverse
technologies and evidence based knowledge for avoiding ethical issues(Lachman, Swanson &
Winland-Brown, 2015).As discussed by Westrick (2016), it is the responsibility of nurses to
provide the best possible care to the patient applying nursing core values, without breaching
ethics. The case study represents an ethical issue regarding the use of social media of Dan who
was a registered the nursing student and illegal confiscation of medication of Registered Nurse
Jane. The purpose of the paper is to identify all of the transgressions and associated nursing
standard, code of ethics and code of conduct. This paper will discuss transgressions occurred in
the case study, code of conduct and ethics associated with it and what should the nurse have done
in following paragraphs.
The case study represents two ethical issues which have an impact on the nursing
practice and responsive care to the patient. In the case study, Dan who was a registered nursing
student, placed at my local hospital at smith place where his preceptor for morning shift was
Registered, Nurse Jane. During the morning medication round, Dan observed that the
registered nurse Jane who took paracetamol from the medication room and put it in the pocket
and justified that she needed it for her hangover. The first transgression observed in this case
study was illegal to use of hospital resources of Jane for the personal interest whereas it is the
accountability of nurses to use the hospital resources only for the best interest of patients. Using
hospital resources for personal interest is against the nursing code of conduct, values and nursing
standard (Schmidt & McArthur,2018). Later part of the morning, Jane was unwell and Dan had

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to remind her of each patient and medication discrepancy. The second transgression in this case
study was appearing unwell of Jane and still conducting nursing duties and Dan had to remind of
her patients and medication discrepancies of patients. As discussed by Karimi et al. (2015), in
order to provide the best possible care to the patient, nurses are required to be mentally and
physically fit. In the current context, Dan had to remind her of her patients and medication
discrepancies which affected the practice of registered nurse and safety of patients. After lunch,
RN Jane directed Dan to assists her in complex vacuum dressing of a blind older patient. When
Jane left, Dan chatted with the patient and took a couple of pictures of wound and posted in the
social media. The third transgression occurred in this case study was posting the photo of the
wound on Facebook by Dan with the intention of showing it to his friends. The social network
increasingly become a potential tool for supporting health care processes such as gathering
information and sharing information, communicating with colleagues and other individuals of
the same working field. More than 40% of the health care consumers utilize social media for
their health care information; even health care professionals use social media for their
interactions with their colleagues and hospital (Beltran-Aroca, et al., 2016). However, as
discussed by Sinclair, Papps and Marshall (2016), exploiting social networking site with the
information of patients for personal interest is an ethical issue since the confidentiality and
privacy of the patient was breached in this case. It is an ethical and legal responsibility of the
nurse to maintain the confidentiality of patients in order to provide safe and responsive care.
Disclosing personal information create ethical issues since it questioned the safety of patients.
As discussed above three transgressions was observed in this case study which further
reduces the quality of care and affected nursing practice. In order to discuss the nursing

INTRODUCTION TO NURSING4
standard and ethical practice of nurses, two transgressions such as appear unwell of Jane while
providing care to the patient and posting the picture of the wound of older patient in social media
has been chosen. Considering the first transgression, Registered nurse Jane appeared unwell
due to a big night out and attended patient in order to provide care where student nurse Dan had
to remind her of patients and provided the medication discrepancies. This transgression violated
standard 3 ( maintains the capability for practice) of Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
which suggested that a registered nurse should respond in a timely manner to health and
wellbeing of self and others in order to maintain the capability of safe practice
(Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au., 2019). The rationale behind this is that as discussed by
Brennan (2017), the significant number of nurses conducts medication error because they neglect
their health which further question patient safety. Taking an insight of the situation, Jane
appeared unwell and still attended the professional practice which breached the standard 3 since
the inability to remember her patient and medication discrepancies might cause medication error
which further question patient safety. This nursing practice violated principle 7.1 (Your and
your colleagues’ health) of nursing code of conduct which states that registered nurses should
seek help and advice if they are ill or impaired to provide safe practice to the patient practice
(Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au., 2019). Nurses have the responsibility to maintain their mental
and physical health in order to provide safe practice which was absent in this case study, as Jane
was present in the hospital despite being unwell, highlighting breaching of a code of conduct 7.1
(Azarsa et al., 2015). Considering code of ethics of Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia,
this practice violated Value Statement 4 (Nurses value access to quality nursing and health care
for all people) which stated that Nurses should value and accept responsibility for self-care
which involves maintaining their wellbeing, physical and psychological and strengths and