Healthcare, Illnesses and Ethical Considerations

This assignment is an essay discussing the complex relationship between human choices, healthcare, illnesses, and death. The author argues that preventable diseases and deaths stem from individual actions and emphasizes the importance of healthy living. They also reflect on the emotional toll caring for dying patients takes on healthcare professionals, highlighting ethical considerations in patient privacy and family involvement. The essay draws upon various academic sources to support its arguments.

Running head: SPECIALTY PRACTICE 1
Specialty Practice
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliations

SPECIALTY PRACTICE 2
Specialty Practice
Online Module 1
Nursing specialists play a significant role in managing patients suffering from both
acute and chronic illnesses. Nurse specialists are required to be registered nurses with high
standards of clinical prowess and ought to have diverse skills and knowledge to expand their
practices. Notably, a registered nurse profession comes along with significant responsibilities
and complexities. Labor and delivery nurse specialists play a more significant role in caring for
women during delivery. They take care of the newly born offspring; treat the various
complications among the women who have delivered as well as the babies (Shields, 2013). This
group of nurse specialists possesses brilliant quick decision-making skills and critical thinking.
They help in educating mothers and families for the phases of giving birth and assist a patient
with breastfeeding guidelines instantaneously after childbirth. Labor and delivery nurses care for
females during childbirth and labor. They monitor the baby as well as the mother and coach the
mothers on best practices. Theyassist mothers with gynecologic care and contraceptive control.
In the same token, the labor and delivery nurses maintain safe working environment and hygiene
in acquiescence with the health care measures. They also research to improve the healthcare
outcome and nursing practices. Conspicuously, labor and delivery nurses aid in bringing
individuals to the globe every day, therefore, require multifaceted skills and advanced level of
education to carry out their duties effectively.
There have been several advances over the years toconsiderably improve nurse's safety.
Healthcare personnel are being confronted with job risks such as blood borne pathogens. A
healthy nurse is defined as one who enthusiastically focuses on maintaining and establishing a
balance as well as a synergy of emotional, intellectual, and physical health. One of the ways

SPECIALTY PRACTICE 3
through which healthcare facilities may keep empathy fatigue from occurring includes ensuring
that workers’ aid program is put in place. According to Lim, Bogossian& Ahern (2010), the team
ought to come in after a traumatic scenario to assist workers to deal with the experience and
debrief, because if debriefing is not put in position, cumulative effect might exist, and the nurse
may burn out so nippily. Subsequently, reducing burnout may encompass a passage of national
law which would need health care facilities to offer minimum nursing staffing consistently
(Trinkoff et al. 2008). It is important to note that the nurses operate under a code of conduct
which requires them to consolidate patient confidentiality, offer quality care, and treat the
patients with a lot of dignity.
Online Module Two
Carers play a vital role in the healthcare sector and ought to be appropriately supported
and recognized, and the government ought to play its part in this. According to Herring (2007),
carers are persons who look after a friend or relative who require support due to mental illness,
physical disability, and age. The carers play a significant role in offering information to the
healthcare personnel; however, they have been ignored in the decision-making process, and they
have no legal directive presently. In spite of the joys which caring provide, itcarries with it
substantial demerits, for example, the caring team experience social exclusion and isolation,
from failing to recognize their essential roles in the society. Carers habitually suffer poverty after
retiring and feel depression, anxiety, stress as well as lack of sleep because of caring all the time.
Legislation should be done to pass specific acts which will require particular attention to be paid
to the caring team’s wish for leisure, training, learning, and employment opportunities. Lovatt et
al. (2015), advocates that carers should have the right to vouchers, direct payment, and support

SPECIALTY PRACTICE 4
services. It is significant to put in place policy and legal framework which recognize the vital
role of individuals who support and care for lives of persons with various disabilities.
Gold, Philip, McIver, and Komesaroff (2009), argue that patients’ right to privacy is quite
fundamental in health care since the medical practitioners assume the responsibility of a
guardian. Nonetheless, as a patient’s health deteriorates, doctors are repeatedly confronted by the
prerequisite of protecting patient’s privacy whereas addressing the patient’s expectations. The
physicians may find themselves between a rock and a hard place regarding the patient’s
information. In this regards, the carer act as an intermediary between the patient and the
physician by conveying the patient’s progress. The partnership amid patients, their carers, and
medical practitioners within the modern healthcare aid in quality service delivery. Mason,
Laurie, and Smith (2013) advocate that having the carers in the healthcare’s law and ethics
would enable the caring team to undertake their responsibilities without experiencing any fatigue
due to long working hours. The law and ethics would be able to distinguish and specify the realm
of the carers, and they will feel motivated in their undertakings to provide services for the
patients. The ethics law would also curtail some of the bad experiences patients always receive
from their carers as a result of diverse beliefs, customs, and traditions.
Online Module 3
The perception and comprehension of dying, illness, health as well as the experience of
anyone’s death is a personal stuff, and the connotation a personality attributes to it differs from
individual to individual. As a nurse, it is essential to understand that various persons view the
mentioned experiences and concepts in a multiplicity of ways, and some of the ideas can
consternate us as nurses. My experience regarding health, illness, dying, death, and disease are
socially established based on diets, injuries, culture, environment, and gender issues within the

SPECIALTY PRACTICE 5
health care. Some deaths occur due to bladder cancers in women while others occur due to
terminal illness. A terminally sick person passes many phases of emotional acceptance whereas
in the dying process. Firstly, there is isolation and denial followed by resentment and anger after
which the individual craves to escape the inexorable.
As a nurse, I believe that every individual has a right to life, therefore, must get quality
healthcare services to continue with life. A lot of people believe that the spread of illnesses is
highly expedited by ethnic beliefs as well as the socioeconomic status of persons. Some people
also believe that the current technologies result in chronic diseases such as cardiac arrest. Dying
patients should seek resuscitation if possible to help save their lives. In the same token,
consumption of hard drugs such as cigarettes has also led to several diseases such as cancer (US
Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). People fail to acknowledge the side effects of
such substances and spread them to others. Many women also do have miscarriages due to
smoking. It, therefore, goes without saying that some of the illnesses are brought by human
beings themselves.
Healthy living is an essential aspect since it helps in shunning wastage of resources in
hospitals due to treatment. According to Kim (2017), death is a painful process which should
only come naturally but not because of diseases which can be prevented by individual human
beings. Societies and families do not experience happiness when their member is sick or dead.
Remarkably, dying, illness and death have become normal nowadays because of failure to adhere
to healthcare principles. Individuals take part in activities which are deemed dangerous,
therefore, deteriorating their health, causing diseases, and eventually leading to death. My
perception and experience in regards to illnesses, dying, and death is emotional since it pains me
when a patient loses a life on my watch.

SPECIALTY PRACTICE 6
References
Gold, M., Philip, J., McIver, S., &Komesaroff, P. A. (2009). Between a rock and a hard place:
exploring the conflict between respecting the privacy of patients and informing their
carers. Internal Medicine Journal, 39(9)
Herring, J. (2007). Where are the carers in healthcare law and ethics?. Legal Studies, 27(1), 51-
73.
Kim, Y. J. (2017). A Study on the Types of Perception of Death among Korean Elders by Using
Q Methodology. International Information Institute (Tokyo). Information, 20(1A), 229.
Lim, J., Bogossian, F., & Ahern, K. (2010). Stress and coping in Australian nurses: a systematic
review. International Nursing Review, 57(1 )
Lovatt, M., Nanton, V., Roberts, J., Ingleton, C., Noble, B., Pitt, E., ...&Munday, D. (2015). The
provision of emotional labour by health care assistants caring for dying cancer patients in
the community: A qualitative study into the experiences of health care assistants and
bereaved family carers. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 52(1), 271-279.
Mason, K., Laurie, G., & Smith, A. M. (2013). Mason and McCall Smith's law and medical
ethics.Oxford University Press.
Plank, A., Mazzoni, V., &Cavada, L. (2012).Becoming a caregiver: new family carers'
experience during the transition from hospital to home. Journal Of Clinical Nursing,
21(13/14), 2072-
Shields, L. (2013).A personal essay on the role of the nurse. Contemporary nurse, 43(2), 213-
218.
Trinkoff, A. M., Geiger-Brown, J. M., Caruso, C. C., Lipscomb, J. A., Johantgen, M. Nelson, A.
L., ... Selby, V. L. (2008). Personal safety for nurses. In R. G. Hughes (Ed.)., Patient

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Safety and Quality: an Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses (pp. 1-36). Rockville, MD:
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US).
US Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). The health consequences of smoking—
50 years of progress: a report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: US Department of
Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center
for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health,
17.