Analyzing Common Good in Healthcare: Nursing Perspective

This essay delves into the principle of the common good within the context of nursing and healthcare. It begins by defining the common good as a social condition that allows individuals and groups to achieve their goals, emphasizing the dignity, unity, and equality of all people. The essay identifies the overwork of medical staff as a global issue, critically analyzing its impact on healthcare quality and staff efficiency. It argues that unequal distribution of responsibility hinders the common good. The essay proposes solutions to mitigate these challenges, including equal distribution of responsibility, flexible shifts for healthcare professionals, international rules for work division, and increased collaboration among nursing staff. It highlights how these measures can improve healthcare quality, reduce stress, and ensure the well-being of both nursing professionals and patients. The essay references several scholarly articles to support its arguments and concludes by emphasizing the importance of implementing these solutions to achieve the common good in healthcare.

Running Head: Bachelor of Nursing
BACHELOR OF NURSING

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Table of Contents
Definition and clarification of the principle of the common good.............................................3
Critical analysis of the issue.......................................................................................................3
Proposal of a way to mitigate challenges...................................................................................4
Reference list..............................................................................................................................7

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Definition and clarification of the principle of the common good
The term common good follows a particular principle. The principle of common good is
“every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the
dignity, unity, and equality of all people (Democraciaparticipativa.net, 2018)." According to
this principle, common good refers to a social condition that allows people to reach goals or
objectives either as an individual or group. Overwork of medical staff is a global issue that is
impacting on the lives of medical staffs and decreasing their efficiency. According to the
principle of CST, every human being is valuable and dignity of a human has transcendent
value and it helps to promote common good (Høy, Lillestø, Slettebø, Sæteren, Heggestad,
Caspari & Lindwall, 2016). However, unequal distribution of responsibility in health sector is
impacting in dignity of nursing workers.
Critical analysis of the issue
The issue of overworked hospital and medical staff has become a global issue. According
to Curtis, Fry, Shaban & Considine (2017), the shared responsibility in terms of the common
good is not being realized by local and global people. It means that some of the healthcare
professionals are not realizing that they must perform collaboratively by sharing their
responsibility for serving care. As per the principle of the common good, benefit of all people
within the society must be considered while performing. Some of the healthcare professionals
including doctors and nurses work overtime and face extreme exhaustion due to insufficient
sleep and resting time. On the other hand, Rogers & Wattis (2015) have contradicted that
some of the healthcare professionals believe in own benefit and do not understand the
principle of common good. Overworked nurses and other healthcare professionals are trying
to provide the best medical support to the public. However, it can be seen that the quality of

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healthcare is being reduced worldwide due to lack of shared responsibility within healthcare
staff.
This issue has a strong impact on society in terms of local and global context. Nurses and
other healthcare professionals, who are working overtime, always face the issue of burnout.
They fail to provide their best effort at workplace. These people understand the concept of the
common good, but they cannot serve properly without the cooperation of all coworkers. As a
result, it can be seen that the stress level of healthcare employees including doctors, nurses
and clinical staff are increasing day by gay in a global context. According to Grace (2017),
this consequence is indicating that standard of healthcare is decreasing day by day throughout
the world and lack of shared responsibility in healthcare professional is the main reason
behind this challenging issue. It is important to address these challenges with the vision of
common good for ensuring benefits for all community members.
Proposal of a way to mitigate challenges
For mitigating this global issue of overworked medical staffs different solutions can be
provided. Equal distribution of responsibility is the main solution that can help to minimize
the problem to a greater extent. As opined by Papadopoulos, Shea, Taylor, Pezzella & Foley
(2016), common good or welfare for all can be achieved through the provision of equal value
to all people irrespective of their gender and culture. Hence, maintaining and preserving
human dignity can help to achieve the common good. In nursing professional community
proper understanding needs to be there among workers that can help in the distribution of
workload. Moreover, the local government needs to frame proper policies to avoid overwork
of healthcare workers. This is because stressed workers are unable to provide good service
and care to patients. Policies regarding work division can be done through proper
implementation of a framework that can help to increase efficiency of workers and quality of

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service. Hence, welfare of both nursing professionals and patients can be done. Local
healthcare authorities and local government must communicate with healthcare professionals
to understand the reason behind lack of shared responsibility among healthcare workers.
Local hospitals and healthcare organizations must avoid all kinds of biases while distributing
workload. Workload must be distributed based on ability and experience of healthcare staff.
This approach may help organizations to serve better to society. Moreover, the principle of
common good can be easily considered through this practice.
Another solution is to ensure flexible shifts for healthcare professionals and authority of
hospitals and healthcare associations can play an important role in this regard. Healthcare
professionals must serve as per their shift time assigned by authority. According to
Kunzweiler et al. (2016), this practice must be implemented globally with the help of
government of countries. Government of different countries needs to develop a legal
framework with fix shift time for healthcare professionals. It must be monitored that all
healthcare professionals are giving their best effort within assigned shift and no overtime is
being served. As opined by Sison, Ferrero & Guitián (2016), this practice may help to reduce
stress in healthcare staff and it is possible to focus on the principle of common good.
Additionally, it can be said that this practice is potent enough to enhance the quality of
healthcare service throughout the world. Allowing healthcare and hospital staff to work in a
flexible shift will help hospital authorities to incorporate the principle of human dignity. As
mentioned by Razavi & Staab (2010), flexible working hours helps individuals to maintain
balance between their professional and personal life. Moreover, burnout in hospitals in
different countries can be avoided by implementing this solution. It means that patients will
get the best quality medical support from these organizations of healthcare industry. This
aspect is potential to help in ensuring community engagement. Cooperation from patients and
their families with nurses and doctors can ensure their speedy recovery.

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International rules of work division can also help to mitigate this problem. Different
international organizations need to bring laws that can help in equal distribution of labor in
nursing care. As stated by Rogers & Wattis (2015), human dignity can be increased through
provision of values, rights. Inappropriate work division impacts on the achievement of
common good and thus satisfaction rate of both patients and workers decreases. These global
human rights organizations need to increase awareness among nursing communities all
around the world regarding the advantages of collaboration. Moreover, management of
healthcare centers needs to be guided regarding human resource techniques. Recruitment of
appropriate workers can decrease stress from current group of staff (Marć, Bartosiewicz,
Burzyńska, Chmiel & Januszewicz, 2019). Global organizations like WHO need to frame
proper policies that can impact on operations of local nursing authorities and organizations.
Increasing collaboration of nursing staff is another solution to reduce overwork. This can
be implemented globally throughout all the countries and regions. As opined by Rogers &
Wattis (2015), through the help of collaboration nursing staff can share and gain feedback
and information regarding working techniques. Hence, common good can be achieved
through this process and stress level of overworked nursing staff can be reduced. Nursing
staffs of different developed countries can share their experiences and techniques with other
staff from different parts of the globe. This can help them to learn new techniques of work
division and can also learn about cooperation. Thus, equal work division can be achieved and
human dignity can be preserved. These solutions can be applied to achieve the common good
and thus welfare for both the nursing community and patients can be achieved.

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Reference list
Curtis, K., Fry, M., Shaban, R. Z., & Considine, J. (2017). Translating research findings to
clinical nursing practice. Journal of clinical nursing, 26(5-6), 862-872. Retrieved
from:
Grace, P. J. (Ed.). (2017). Nursing ethics and professional responsibility in advanced
practice. US: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Democraciaparticipativa.net (2018), The principle of common good, [Online], Retrieved on
23rd July 2019 from: https://democraciaparticipativa.net/documentos-data-a-
referenda/documents-in-english/christian-social-thoght/14519-the-principle-of-
common-good-in-the-catholic-church-s-social-doctrine.html
Høy, B., Lillestø, B., Slettebø, Å., Sæteren, B., Heggestad, A. K. T., Caspari, S., ... &
Lindwall, L. (2016). Maintaining dignity in vulnerability: A qualitative study of the
residents’ perspective on dignity in nursing homes. International Journal of Nursing
Studies, 60, 91-98. Retrieved from:
https://hvlopen.brage.unit.no/hvlopen-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2424688/
Maintaining_Dignity.pdf?sequence=1
Kunzweiler, K., Voigt, K., Kugler, J., Hirsch, K., Bergmann, A., & Riemenschneider, H.
(2016). Factors influencing sleep quality among nursing staff: Results of a cross
sectional study. Applied Nursing Research, 32, 241-244. Retrieved
from:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0897189716301422
Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2019). A nursing
shortage–a prospect of global and local policies. International nursing review, 66(1),
9-16. Retrieved from:

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Papadopoulos, I., Shea, S., Taylor, G., Pezzella, A., & Foley, L. (2016). Developing tools to
promote culturally competent compassion, courage, and intercultural communication
in healthcare. Journal of Compassionate Health Care, 3(1), 2. Retrieved from:
Razavi, S., & Staab, S. (2010). Underpaid and overworked: A cross‐national perspective on
care workers. International Labour Review, 149(4), 407-422. Retrieved
from:http://www.academia.edu/download/34424374/Razavi_and_Staab_2010_Under
paid_and_overworked.pdf
Rogers, M., & Wattis, J. (2015). Spirituality in nursing practice. Nursing Standard, 29(39),
51-57. Retrieved from:
Sison, A. J. G., Ferrero, I., & Guitián, G. (2016). Human dignity and the dignity of work:
Insights from Catholic social teaching. Business Ethics Quarterly, 26(4), 503-528.
Retrieved from:https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/
article/human-dignity-and-the-dignity-of-work-insights-from-catholic-social-
teaching/86A37FF416204464C52A3129D418F39B