Legal & Ethical Decision Making in Person-Centered Care

Running Head: LEGAL & ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN PERSON-CENTERED CARE 1
Legal & Ethical Decision Making in Person-Centered Care
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Legal & Ethical Decision Making in Person-Centered Care

LEGAL & ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN PERSON-CENTERED CARE 2
In the field of nursing, both legal and ethical considerations are very important. Ethical
standards are the actions of healthcare workers based on human principles of right and wrong.
The main difference between these two terms is that legal considerations are based on written
laws while ethical considerations are based on common knowledge about what is right and what
is wrong. Health workers work in technical and fast-paced environments which demand effective
and quick decisions about patient care. In most cases, the patients are helpless and hence depend
fully on the nurses (Butts & Rich, 2019). Without legal and ethical considerations, nurses would
act recklessly and hence limit the chances of patient well-being. This paper analyzes the case of
Taylah, an underage girl who visits the clinic to seek advice on contraceptives. The four main
Beauchamp and Childress’ ethical principles will be used in the analysis of the case study.
Regardless of the role that a health worker plays in a hospital setting, the field has always
been challenging when it comes to the decision-making process. Most of the treatments and
medical procedures have advantages and disadvantages. To minimize the chances of making
wrong decisions, Beauchamp and Childress gave four principles in their book “1985 Principles
of Biomedical Ethics” to guide medical practitioners in the decision making the process. The
four principles outlined in the book were autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice
(Adhikari, Paudel, Aro, Adhikari, Adhikari & Mishra, 2016).
The case to be scrutinized in this paper touches on the interaction between a sexual health
nurse and Taylah, a 14-year-old girl who visits the sexual health clinic to get contraceptives.
According to the case study, Taylah is a diabetic and also has self-esteem issues which have
made her get into risky behaviors like sexual activities, binge drinking and partying. Her
attraction to older boys has been attributed to her body physique, which presents her as a mature

LEGAL & ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN PERSON-CENTERED CARE 3
person. The case study has also revealed that the girl has already become sexually active after
getting into sexual intercourse with two random boys at parties when she got binge drinking.
The interaction between Taylah and the sexual health nurse presented in the video has the
four main ethical principles utilized in different approaches. In some instances, the sexual health
nurse has adhered to the guidelines of Beauchamp and Childress while in other incidences they
have been violated (Carvalho, Pereira, Jácomo, Magalhaes, Araújo, Hernández-Marrero &
Schatman, 2018).
The sexual health nurse adhered to the autonomy principle as outlined by Beauchamp and
Childress in their book “1985 Principles of Biomedical Ethics”. This can be seen on several
occasions where the sexual health nurse had to listen and approve the opinions and decisions of
Taylah regardless of how misleading they were. According to the principle of autonomy, the
patient or client has the right to retain control over his or her body. A health care profession in
this scenario can only advice or suggest what he or she perceives as good approaches or actions
but not to coerce or persuade the patient to follow the advice because this will be a violation to
this principle (Gallo, Baxter, Murphy, Schwartz & Thoma, 2018). In the end, this principle
allows the client or a patient to make personal decisions regardless of whether the practitioner
approves them or not.
As presented in the case study, the sexual health nurse did not decline Taylah’s request to
be given contraceptives despite the fact that she was underage. The fact that the nurse allowed
Taylah to explain why she needed contraceptives without cutting her short as well as explaining
to her more about the different contraceptives shows that the nurse respected the young girl’s
opinions and decisions. Consequently, the nurse adheres to Taylah’s request not to inform her