Nursing
Ethical Compassion in Nursing
What personal, cultural, and spiritual values contribute to your worldview and philosophy of nursing? How do these values shape or influence your nursing practice?
The role played by the nurse professional is highly consequential to the health outcomes experiences by patients. This means that the nursing profession must be highly regulated by clearly defined and positively reinforced ethical provisions. These provisions are given by the ANA Nursing Code of Ethics and, in my personal experiences, are imperative as a way of dictating how we, as professionals, are expected to engage patients, required to relate to colleagues and trained to respect human dignity. This connection between ethicality and treatment quality contributes both to my personal worldview and to the broader field of nursing. With specific reference to my experiences in the NICU and maternity wards, this connection takes on particular importance. Here, quality outcomes mean sound, healthy births, the minimization of risk or pain for the mother and provision of an excellent environment within which to bring a newborn into the world.
The link between achieving these outcomes and behaving in an ethical manner is inextricable. My cultural background in particular helps give a strong foundation to my actual practice in the field. In my upbringing and family background, there are few more sacred responsibilities that helping to ensure safety, health and compassion for the mother and...
Likewise, I have been raised to believe in proactive medical attention throughout pregnancy to ensure that everything proceeds with the proper personal oversight. I believe that early planning, thorough patient education and regular contact with professional care is important.
This influences how I proceed with treatment, directing me to engage patients directly to ensure that they understand the implications of the steps ahead of them and to provide outgoing patients with proper discharge support before they leave the hospital and are on their own.
2. Define values, morals, and ethics in the context of your obligation to nursing practice. Explain how your personal values, philosophy, and worldview may conflict with your obligation to practice, creating an ethical dilemma.
Patients come from a diverse population and, as a result, reflect a wide range of cultural, linguistic, religious and educational distinctions. It is the ethical responsibility of an effective nurse to take all appropriate steps to understand and work with this diverse characteristics. In fact, this speaks to one of the key ethical principles that I have employed in my practice. Specifically, I recognize that sometimes the cultural values of my patients may differ from my own. It is incumbent upon me to navigate these differences with the utmost of respect for the cultural and spiritual beliefs of my patients but also with a focus on doing what best serves the medical interests…
