Ethics in Nursing: Person-Centered Care, Workplace, Reflection

This essay delves into the critical aspects of ethics in nursing, emphasizing the significance of person-centered care. It explores the core values inherent in the nursing profession, such as dignity, respect, and compassion, and how these principles contribute to patient well-being and satisfaction. The essay defines person-centered care, outlining its key components and benefits, including improved patient experiences and the promotion of healthier lifestyles. Furthermore, it critically evaluates the nursing workplace and the broader profession, highlighting the skills and attributes necessary for nurses to provide safe and quality care, including teamwork, communication, and evidence-based practice. The importance of reflective practice is also discussed, with an example provided to illustrate how nurses can learn from past experiences to improve their clinical expertise and decision-making. The essay emphasizes the need for nurses to maintain ethical standards, respect patient autonomy, and provide holistic care to enhance patient outcomes.

Running head: ETHICS IN NURSING
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ETHICS IN NURSING
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Core values in nursing:....................................................................................................................2
Person centered care and its important components:.......................................................................3
Contribution of the person centered care approach in development of quality of care:..................4
Critical evaluation of the workplace and nursing profession:.........................................................5
Importance of Reflective practice:...................................................................................................7
Example of reflective practice:........................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................9
References:....................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
The term person centered care is still emerging in this generation and can be applied to a
form of healthcare where the patients are mainly kept in the center of the care plans. Person
centered care in nursing ensures that the patients are treated with dignity, respect and compassion
making them feel included in the treatment procedures (Kogan, Wilber and Mosqueda 2016).
This form of approach offer coordinated care, support and treatment to the patients that are
highly personalized. Researchers and professionals appreciate this type of care as this form of
care supports people for recognizing as well as developing their own strengths and abilities
helping them to live a fulfilling and independent life (Wildevur and Simonse 2015). The report
will thereby explain the approach of the person centered care, different aspects associated with it,
importance of professionalism in healthcare and importance of reflection. All these ensure
development of skills and knowledge of professionals making them provide the best care to
patients.
Core values in nursing:
A culture of caring is considered to be an integral part of the nursing profession. Such an
attitude helps in the characterization of the concern as well as the consideration of the whole
person that in turn helps in providing physical stability and well-being with the person. Nurses
also need to have the core values by which they can maintain the human rights of patients and
connect with them at an emotional level (Brown and Schmidt 2016). Every nurse is expected to
maintain the ethics of maintaining the dignity as well as autonomy of the patients and work

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according to the wishes of the patients. This makes the patients feel respected and empowered
that in turn has positive aspects on the patient’s health. Patients should be included in the
decision-making situations as well as in effective partnerships as that makes the patients feel
that their suggestions are considered important and this increases their self-esteem, and self-
confidence. Nurses need to be very careful about maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of
the patients thereby protecting their personal information and refraining to get involved in legal
obligation (Noushi et al. 2018). This ethics come under data protection act and nurses should be
careful in maintaining the legal rules while caring for patients. Nurses need to treat patients as
unique being by respecting their individual identity and undertake interventions after ensuring
informed consent, maintaining their rights as well as choice. If patients tend to reject the
treatment, their choice should be given first priority according to ethics of autonomy and dignity.
Person centered care and its important components:
Person centered care can be defined as the approach undertaken by different healthcare as
well as social services where patients and family members are considered as equal partners in
planning, developing and monitoring care of the patients ensuring that it meets their needs. If for
example geriatric patients are considered who mainly lead a dependent life or are suffering from
chronic disorders, patient centered care develop their quality of life not only physically but
provide strong emotional and mental support (Edvardon, Sandman and Borrell 2014). Dignity
and autonomy are two important aspects where the values of the old patients would be respected.
This increases their self-esteem and confidence and encourage them to participate in the care.
Healthcare professionals take into account the preferences and the expressed needs of such
patients before developing their care plan and interventions (Lines, Lepore and Winer 2015).
This form of approach in caring also involves providing a coordinating and integrating care to

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patients by working together along with a multidisciplinary team in ways by which will ensure
effective communication, passing of information and proper education to the patients and family
members. For example, many old patients may suffer from diabetes. A coordinated care by a
healthcare team like physician, nurses, diabetes educator, dieticians, podologists and others will
ensure that the patients get high quality of care where proper communication, information and
education will help patients to overcome symptoms and lead quality lives. Another important
aspect of this form of care is that the healthcare professionals make sure that the patients are
physically comfortable and safe ensuring high quality care and patient satisfaction. Professionals
provide emotional support to patients and family members making sure that they have proper
access to healthcare (Noushi et al. 2018). Old patients are highly vulnerable to developing
depression and anxiety due to their degrading quality for life, dependency on others, restrictions
in life and loss of mobility. Therefore, emotional support plays an important role in empowering
such patients. Another important aspect of this type of care is that the professionals make sure
that privacy and confidentiality of the patients are maintained where no information is disclosed
to anyone without the permission of the patients. The care provided to them follows the ethical
guidelines ensuring high patient satisfaction.
Contribution of the person centered care approach in development of quality of care:
Patients who get person centered care from healthcare professionals are highly satisfied
and they have developed quality of life. This approach helps in improving the experiences of the
patients that they have regarding care and satisfaction. This also encourages patients to lead a
healthier lifestyle such as exercising and eating healthily. For example, in case of the old diabetic
patient, proper health literacy, proper diet and freehand exercises can help her improve her
symptoms. This approach also encourage such old patients to be more involved in decision

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making so that they can get services and support, which are significant for their needs (Brooker
and Latham 2015). Old patients feel that they are avoided and isolated for their inabilities and
dependency. Therefore, making them included develops their will power and empowers them to
lead better lives. This type of care includes a holistic approach where physical, environmental
and psychosocial environment of the patients are assessed. They are then modified to ensure risk
free lives that reduce readmission and longer stay at healthcare centers (Brown and Schmidt
2016).
Critical evaluation of the workplace and nursing profession:
Nursing profession is a rewarding career for those individuals who want to provide
service for the humanity and dedicate their lives for the well-being and healthy lives of their
citizens. However, the profession is not an easy path, as nurses have to be highly skilled and
knowledgeable to provide safe and quality care for the patients (LoBiondo et al. 2017). Their
pathway is full of obstacles that they have to overcome through effective attributes and provide
undisrupted service to patients. Nurses need to take undertake huge number of responsibilities
while caring for patients like they have to perform different physical examinations and record
patient histories to diagnose the disorders of the patients and initiate preliminary interventions.
Besides, they have to also provide health promotion, counseling and health education to the
patients and communities. Often different geriatric patients have poorly controlled disorders like
obesity, diabetes, osteoarthritis and others (Koivunen, Niemi and Hupli 2015). Therefore, nurses
develop their health literacy and counsel them in ways by which they become independent and
overcome their physical and emotional turmoil. Nurses need to maintain a safe workplace
environment by properly assessing risks associated with the health of the patient and taking
interventions accordingly to provide safe care (Yoo and Park 2015). Nurses also need to properly

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interpret the information of the patients and thereby make critical decisions about required
actions through proper rationale development and critical thinking ability. Decision-making
ability and problem solving abilities help them to create a healthcare workplace that is free from
any miscommunication and revolts. Nurses need to have teamwork skills where they can act
collaboratively with other healthcare experts to provide coordinated care to the patients.
Developing a collaborative environment in workplace increases productivity, releases stress and
ensure safe care of patients (Bramhall 2014). Nursing professionals also require to conduct
evidence based practices so that they can keep up to date with the recent trades of healthcare
provide the best service to patients. In order to develop a proper healthcare workplace, nurses
need to possess skills like compassion not only towards patients but also to fellow colleagues.
Effective communication and compassion helps in relationship development and strong bonds
that result in development of workplace climate that is free from stress, pressures, tensions, and
internal conflicts. Proper knowledge about the professional codes of conduct and ethics ensure
safest practice to patients that avoid any legal obligation and increase patent satisfaction. Nurses
need to make choices at daily basis and hence critical thinking skills and attentions to detail
ensure high quality care (Arnold and Boggs 2015). Confidence, adaptability, stamina and
commitment towards development help in developing expert nursing professionals. While
working with geriatric patients, compassion and communication are the key elements to make
them feel vales and respected. Huge patience and dedication are required to understand their
mental turmoil, assessing their cognitive skills, educate common health concerns like fall
prevention strategies, proper healthy eating, incontinence issues, sexual issues and others (Koto-
shimada et al. 2016). Educating them about personal safety and diseases prevention is time

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consuming. Therefore, nursing professionals have to develop skills that help them to master their
professionals efficiently.
Importance of Reflective practice:
Reflection can be considered as an effective tool in nursing profession as it gives the
scope to such professionals to identify and develop personal and professional skills to
incorporate in clinical practice (Schimdt and Brown 2016). It also enables them to better
understand themselves and learn from the mistakes that they had conducted (Taschuk et al.
2017). They could thereby reflect on the experiences to solve problems, develop skills and hence
modify their clinical expertise for betterment. Researchers therefore define this procedure as the
process of reviewing an experience in the healthcare practice sessions for describing, analyzing,
evaluating and thereby learning from the practice (Henry 2016). This tool gives scope to nursing
professionals to critically think and deconstruct past experiences, learn from them, and then
apply the modified skills or rationale before care planning and treating the patient. It gives an
opportunity to all healthcare professionals for lifelong learning that provides them the scope to
be an expert professional and be confident ensuring patent satisfaction (Eng and Pai 2015).
Example of reflective practice:
Peter Connelly also known as Baby P had died in London in 2007 due to severe abuses
by his biological mother, his stepfather and brother of his stepfather. The enquiry has found out
that the baby had suffered from 50 bruises over a period of about 8 months even when the baby
was repeatedly monitored by the health professionals of NHS as well as the the London Borough

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of Haringey Children's services. This case had shocked the public as well as the parliament as the
abuses of the baby had been a signal of cruelty, humanity can reach and because of the failure of
the professionals included in the case. If one reflects back on this horrifying case, he or she can
thereby come across several incidences which should be avoided by him or her in her own
healthcare practices to ensure safety and satisfaction of patients. A failure of critical thinking and
decision making was observed which had given an unfortunate fate to the child. The professional
did not have followed the core principle of caring for the patient. They did not empathize with
the situation of the baby P and did not undertake proper actions that they should have taken for
the patient. Even after understanding the fact, that the baby was bruised and abuse repeatedly,
social workers lacked the courage of convictions (Telegraph.co.uk, 2008). This has been clearly
reported in the daily called the Telegraph. They were not sure about their professional judgment
and though they were mistaken to consider the bruises caused by family members. Moreover,
they kept importance to uniting the baby and the mother for developing emotional attachment
overriding the importance of the safety of the child. This lack of decision-making power can
affect healthcare practices and therefore professionals need to develop critical thinking skills,
decision making ability and learn to trust their intuition. Risk assessment ability was also poor. It
was also noted that when four child protection agencies were summoned to attend a meeting to
discuss the case, the attendance was poor. The social workers only attended but the lawyers,
doctors and police were absent as reported by the daily (Wardrop, 2010). Within that period, the
baby was already having two sets of injuries. This states that the professionals were not
undertaking their duty towards the public and were not maintaining their duties and oaths they
had towards nation. Moreover, a lack of partnership was observed among the different healthcare
centers like the social workers, nursing professional, doctors and others and for this the result of

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the case became very negative. Lack of professionalism in the case had been one of the major
reasons for the death of the baby. Failure of appreciation of risks was noted when the report
stated that in spite of repeated injuries; the healthcare professionals provided little importance to
the rationale that why a baby would be repeatedly bruised if no abuses are really taking place.
Therefore, when the current healthcare professionals would be reviewing such cases, they can
easily learn from the mistakes the healthcare professionals had conducted. They can apply their
own reflective skills and find out what else could have been done in order to avoid the situations.
The new professionals would learn the importance of decision-making skills, risk assessment
skills and critical thinking skills. They would learn that of the three skills would have been used
by the professionals; the baby would have been alive today. Therefore, in this way, by reflecting
on past events, professionals can develop their skills and knowledge ensuring patient safety.
Conclusion:
From the entire discussion above, patient centered care is seen to ensure service delivery
tom patient that not only ensure patient safety but also provides high patient satisfaction. Patient
feel empowered, valued, loved, educated and confident about themselves that have positive
outcomes on their health. For this, nurses need to develop a large number of attributes for being
expert professionals. Effective communication, compassion, critical thinking ability, good
scientific knowledge, attention to details and others are some of them. Moreover, effective
reflective practice also helps nurses to engage themselves in lifelong learning from the events
experienced by them. All these help them to evolve as expert nursing professionals who dedicate
themselves for healthy lives of citizens.

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Arnold, E.C. and Boggs, K.U., 2015. Interpersonal Relationships-E-Book: Professional
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Bramhall, E., 2014. Effective communication skills in nursing practice. Nursing Standard
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Brooker, D. and Latham, I., 2015. Person-centred dementia care: Making services better with
the VIPS framework. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Brown, J.M. and Schmidt, N.A., 2016. Service–Learning in Undergraduate Nursing Education:
Where is the Reflection?. Journal of professional nursing, 32(1), pp.48-53.
Edvardsson, D., Sandman, P.O. and Borell, L., 2014. Implementing national guidelines for
person-centered care of people with dementia in residential aged care: effects on perceived
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Eng, C.J. and Pai, H.C., 2015. Determinants of nursing competence of nursing students in
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Kogan, A.C., Wilber, K. and Mosqueda, L., 2016. Person‐Centered Care for Older Adults with
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Telegraph.co.uk. 2008. Baby P case: Serious Case Review identifies key failures. [online]
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