Spiritual and functional needs of elderly patient

Running head: NURSING ETHICS
NURSING ETHICS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

NURSING ETHICS
Part one
Quality of life is an important outcome measure while caring for patients, who are
terminally ill. The measures that can be taken ranges for a complete assessment, includes
psychological, physical, spiritual and functional needs of elderly patients. Patients who are
seriously ill should be screened for pain, nausea, shortness of breath and constipation at the
time of the admission. Patients under hospice care should be thoroughly discussed about the
spiritual needs of the patient. A palliative care task force normally would need physicians as
well as non physician members. They should include pharmacist, social care workers, non-
hospitalist physicians and the spiritual care providers. Patients would require bereavement
counseling, housekeeping assistance and respite care1.
The topic of end of life gives rise to many ethical questions, including the quality of
life, beneficence and the accountability of the physicians towards their patients. The ethical
principle that justifies euthanasia is beneficence, which is the complement of non-
maleficence. Beneficence allows the doctors to promote well fare to the patients2. While it
can be asserted by few that doctors are accountable to preserve life of an individual under any
circumstances, while it can be argued by some that the doctors should act as per the best
interest of the patient. In case of patients who are terminally ill, they often suffer from pain
that is unbearable and wants it to end, which can only be done by ending his life. In such a
case the most merciful approach will be to end his life in a merciful manner3. In such a
1 Wang, Yin-Chih, and Chia-Chin Lin. "Spiritual well-being may reduce the negative impacts of cancer symptoms on the
quality of life and the desire for hastened death in terminally ill cancer patients." Cancer nursing 39, no. 4 (2016): E43-E50.
2 Gaertner, Jan, Waldemar Siemens, Joerg J. Meerpohl, Gerd Antes, Cornelia Meffert, Carola Xander, Stephanie Stock, Dirk
Mueller, Guido Schwarzer, and Gerhild Becker. "Effect of specialist palliative care services on quality of life in adults with
advanced incurable illness in hospital, hospice, or community settings: systematic review and meta-analysis." bmj 357
(2017): j2925.
3 Davis, Mellar P., Jennifer S. Temel, Tracy Balboni, and Paul Glare. "A review of the trials which examine early integration
of outpatient and home palliative care for patients with serious illnesses." Ann Palliat Med 4, no. 3 (2015): 99-121.

NURSING ETHICS
circumstances death is imminent and a doctor is only left with two choices. Ending the life of
the patient by a physician either assisted suicide or let the disease to take its course.
Part two
2. The principle of beneficence and non maleficence provides important perspective from
which the roles of the physician can be viewed in Euthanasia. It can be shown by the
physicians, how in certain cases ending a life can be the best thing that a doctor can do 4.
Although people might find the role of the doctor incompatible with mercy killing, one
justified reason for this feeling is that people perceive doctors as having pledged, only to
preserve life when they took the “Hippocratic oath”, but the Hippocratic Oath did not contain
any specific statements obliging the doctors to preserve life at every cost. The oath however
helps to provide the expression of both beneficence and non-maleficence. Keeping a
terminally ill patient under assisted living would only increase the suffering of the patient,
which is against the principle of autonomy and beneficence.
3. While assisted dying has been made legal in several countries, but there is a clinic in
Switzerland who provide assisted dying only after a thorough checkups and is only provided
to terminally ill patients, in order to alleviate their sufferings. While there are certain
advantages of an assisted dying clinic, there are many pitfalls that cannot be overlooked. The
supporters of PAS consider this practice to be a logical extension of the obligation of a
4 BANOVIĆ, Božidar, Veljko Turanjanin, and Anđela MILORADOVIĆ. "An ethical review of euthanasia and physician-
assisted suicide." Iranian journal of public health 46, no. 2 (2017): 173.