Analyzing Issues in Nursing

¶ … Nursing Ethical and moral distress may result in feelings of irritation and helplessness. Such distress transpires when nursing professionals are required to behave in a way that contradicts their ideals. Nurses' integrity may be undermined by such a disregard for professional and personal ideals. Nurses are caught in a quandary between their duty to offer comfort in death and their duty to abide by the orders of the physician (Davies, et al., 1996).

Obstacles might emerge when personnel in the healthcare sector cannot act in accordance with professional norms and personal ideals. The obstacles can be both internal and external. The former emerge due to ineffective communication and job-based skills and knowledge in the nursing staff, from providing adequate palliative care, while the latter occur when the opinion of the nursing staff isn't asked for or given value at the workplace. Such obstacles should be resolved for ensuring both proper patient care and job satisfaction of nurses.

Literature indicates that when nursing professionals believe they are unable to aid terminally ill patients in recovering any longer, they start experiencing a profound feeling of helplessness, sorrow, and uncertainty. They have no idea as to how they must handle the issue of delivering curative and palliative care to such patients (Yam, Rossiter, & Cheung, 2001). Sound instances of this include case management and pain management issues.

Bedside nurses who remain with a young patient for half a day, will perhaps, be the best judge when it comes to evaluating how effective the present pain treatment regimen, as well as other end-of-life requirements are. But the nurse might end up reporting poor control of pain or the requirement of a patient healthcare meeting; their request might not be taken into consideration. Neglect of nurse input tends to make nurses irritated, offended, and unsatisfied, with the patient care being offered.

Implementing any aggressive treatment plan is not easy when one sees a child actively dying. Sometimes, kids who need to be in palliative care continue to receive aggressive, painful treatment that might be administered with scant patient pain appraisal and suboptimal patient pain management. Such aggressive measures require the devotion of precious time, which could otherwise be devoted to the much-needed task of preparing the young patient for death, by the child's parents, siblings, and hospital staff.

Both adults and children require time for completing unfinished tasks, finding closure and saying goodbye. It has been confirmed, by interviews of nurses in clinical practice, that nurses accept the fact that kids wish to feel that their life has some meaning and purpose; they encounter numerous challenges in their attempt to fulfill dying kids' holistic needs (Morgan, 2009). Significance of this Problem It has been reported by Schluter and coworkers (2008) that a mixed picture is presented, with regard to moral distress's effect on care provision.

Some findings indicate that this distress has no negative bearing on care, while others indicate that nurses end up withdrawing from their patients. The researchers did, however, uncover the finding that the proof pertaining to the link between moral distress and job satisfaction is less vague -- job satisfaction was found to be reduced by moral distress. This was ascribed to care delivery by nurses, which they believed was pointless or ineffective, and concerning what they hadn't been consulted about.

The researchers further stumbled upon proof that nurses quit the profession altogether (or their job at the very least) due to moral distress (Gallagher, 2010). Given the finding pertaining to moral distress's implication on the lives of nurses, with physical and emotional manifestations in their personal lives, and breakdown, job dissatisfaction, and walking out on their nursing career, on the professional front, aside from negative impacts for patient care and health institutions, carrying out research focused on the development of this problem is imperative.

Moreover, it is essential to implement plans for strengthening organizational ethical environment,.