The Common Good in Nursing: Challenges, Aspirations, and Practice

This essay delves into the concept of the common good within the nursing profession, emphasizing its significance as an ethical framework that prioritizes the well-being of both individual patients and the broader community. It explores the challenges nurses face in upholding ethical standards, parti...Read More

Running head: COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
Introduction:
Common good is solidarity and can be thought as an opposite to individualism. Common
good incorporates the ethic of responsibility within itself and create meaning in life. Common
good helps analyse ethical and moral issues that affects patient’s care and treatment. Common
good in religious point of view is defined as something that benefits every individual. Nurses
should promote common good by not only providing quality care to the patients but also by
making decisions which is ethically and morally right. The paper focuses on establishing
relationship between the practice of nursing and common good and also discusses on the
challenges in realising aspirations of common good in professional practice both in local and
global contexts.

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COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
Discussion:
The common good, according to the Roman Catholicism has been identified as "the sum
total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their
fulfilment more fully and more easily" (Velasquez et al., 2017). Nurses does not practice
theoretical perspective addressing common good, they handle the concepts in relation to
common good and the outcomes in relevance to it like a person’s apprehensions in a community
and provide justice. From the Roman Catholicism perspective, nurses also has to maintain a
balance between respecting the social integrity and upholding personal dignity (Cochran, 2017).
It is the primary responsibility of a nurse to uphold ethical standards while handling patients and
giving them quality treatment. Nurses should treat the patients in a holistic approach while
maintaining ethical standards (Cooper et al., 2013). During their practice, they come across many
challenges and are unable to make decisions and face ethical dilemmas. They also face
challenges in realising aspirations of their roles in maintaining ethical standards while treating
patients.
Every person has a spiritual nature irrespective of their age, sex, culture and ethnicity
and must be treated by nurse concerning spirituality. Spiritual distress may cause an enormous
pain just like physical pain and can have an impact on the patient’s health by deteriorating his
condition (Hojjatollah Yousefi, 2019). Nurses should be able to provide treatment and care by
implementing interventions that leads to promotion of patient’s health. The nurses are not only
responsible for giving proper medications and care to the patients as prescribed by the doctor, or
to note down and monitor patient’s health status, but also, it falls under their responsibility to
treat the patient with holistic approach (Waters, Schmale, Goetz, Eberl & Wells, 2017). A nurse

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COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
should be able to respond to the spiritual requirements of the patient along with medical
treatments. Nurses who fails to provide quality treatment to the patients by holistic approach,
fails to realize and understand their aspirations for common good in professional setting both
locally and globally (Ramezani et al., 2014).
Nurses face challenges in providing comfort to the patients because of the belief in
spirituality that has increased and became complex progressively with time especially with
disease and health. Many researchers have shown evidences regarding holistic care which is
possible only by being sensitive to the spiritual needs of the patient. A comprehensive and
holistic nursing brings about faith in relationships and connections among mind, spirit and body.
Therefore, nursing should consider all these dimensions to provide an improved health outcome
of the patients. However, nurses sometimes find it difficult to deliver care considering the
spiritual needs of the patients because they identifies it as a challenge for them to impart the
commitment of common good that seems to suppress individual below community (Cochran,
2017).
Locally: The first challenge is the lack of recognition of common good as a tool in
shaping advancement of nursing and practice. If nurses fails to assist the society by promoting
common good and professional nursing with other aspects like compassion and concern about
patients, it could possibly be replaced with modern technology that is managed by technicians
and machines.
Globally: Nurses often face challenges on evidence based practice. Nursing profession
requires evidences and base or references to authenticate particular nursing interventions.
Considering this fact, nurses must provide proper evidences of their expertise and knowledge

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COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
that must align with the data that they have collected either from research or through clinical
practice outcomes.

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COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
Conclusion:
Every nurses does not get an opportunity to realise their dreams and aspirations in
relation to common good within their professional community. They must understand the respect
and dignity of patients in the context of professional community to achieve common good. It is
the responsibility of a nurse to deliver quality care to the patient considering a holistic approach
that includes finding the connections among his body, mind and soul and provide him care
accordingly. Nurses should treat patients considering the spiritual aspects of the patients to get an
improved health outcome since spiritual needs causes satisfaction to the patient and leads to
spiritual growth of the patient making him social and hopeful.

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COMMON GOOD IN NURSING
Referencing:
Cochran C. (2017). “The Common Good and Healthcare Policy,” Health Progress, May-June
2017, pp. 41-44, 47.
Cooper, K. L., Chang, E., Sheehan, A., & Johnson, A. (2013). The impact of spiritual care
education upon preparing undergraduate nursing students to provide spiritual care. Nurse
education today, 33(9), 1057-1061.
Hojjatollah Yousefi, H. (2019). Spiritual care in hospitalized patients. PubMed Central (PMC).
Ramezani, M., Ahmadi, F., Mohammadi, E., & Kazemnejad, A. (2014). Spiritual care in nursing:
a concept analysis. International Nursing Review, 61(2), 211-219.
Velasquez M. et al. (2017). “The Common Good,” Markula Center for Applied Ethics, available
at www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/commongood.html; “Common Good:
Restoring Common Sense to American Law.”
Waters, N., Schmale, T., Goetz, A., Eberl, J., & Wells, J. (2017). A Call to Promote Healthcare
Justice: A Summary of Integrated Outpatient Clinics Exemplifying Principles of Catholic
Social Teaching. The Linacre Quarterly, 84(1), 57-73.
doi:10.1080/00243639.2016.1272330