Ethical and legal perspectives in the first half

Ethical Perspectives

Ethical decision making is a method that is utilized by most of the health care professionals all over the world. The principles of beneficence and autonomy are very crucial when it comes to carefully guiding the decision making process. A nurse needs to understand that the importance of these principles and thus use these principles for the patient's benefit. Chally and Loriz (1998) and Kolouroutis and Thorstenson (1999) have stressed on the relevance of nurses using this model to guide their practice and thus make decisions accordingly.

Being careful of a patient's autonomy means that the nurse is able to respect and understand that the patient has all the rights to make a decision about the care and treatment that the patient receives. (Mappes & DeGrazia, 2006) It is true that the patient may not have enough medical insight as the nurse and he may even make the wrong decision. Regardless, patient's decision has more weightage than the nurse's opinion and the nurse needs to respect that. If the patient is competent medically and is sane, then he can make personal decisions even if the decision is to refuse the treatment that he is getting. (Parker, 2007)

Beneficence means that the health care provider should work to do good for the patient in all the situations possible (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009) In other words; their main goal should be to improve the patient's health. Every situation that the nurse gets should be dealt with differently. This is crucial because what is good for one patient is not always good for a different patient. Along with doing well for the patient, the nurse also should keep their personal wishes and their values in mind.

Topic 2

Nurses all over the world are confronted with ethical and legal dilemmas during their practice. A dilemma is a situation in which the practicing nurse is not sure whether or not the decision that he or she is taking is the right decision or not (Dunn, 2013). ). The purpose of critically analyzing the cases and the ethical legal dilemma that the practicing nurses are faced with every now and then is to ensure the benefit of the patients and the nurses (Fant, 2013; Ward, 2012)

Mr. Lee was an 82-year-old male who had been admitted to the hospital after he suffered from stroke. He was brought to the hospital by his son and only legal heir and guardian. Since Mr. Lee was not in his usual state of health and was in a comatose state, the doctors and nurses reckoned that to fulfill his nutritional requirements, he needs a gastro-tubing for feeding. Every now and then Mr. Lee was seen in discomfort because of the tubing; however this was totally normal since most patients do feel uncomfortable with the tubing.

When Mr. Lee's son came to visit his father at the hospital, he did not approve of the tubing that was inserted through Mr. Lee's mouth to feed him so that his nutritional requirements could be met. He asked the nursing staff to remove the tubing. The head nurse, Mrs. Annie tried to convince his son that his father might day of lack of nutrition since he cannot take any food by mouth. Mr. Lee's son insisted that wants to the tubing out of his father because if he was conscious he would never agree to it. Mrs. Annie had no other choice but to remove the tubing. However, since she believed that it was not morally right to remove the tubing she did not take part in the procedure herself. While her co-workers were removing the tubing, an unfortunate incident took place. Despite taking all the important precautions, Mr. Lee's esophagus started bleeding and developed hypotension. Soon after, his blood pressure dropped to the point where his brain developed ischemia. Now the nurse was faced with a legal ethical dilemma. The dilemma was that it she did not feel morally right to remove the tubing since she believed that the patient could die of the nutritional deficit because he was taking anything by mouth. Moreover, since the patient developed brain damage while removing the tubing, this even could have legal implications.

Topic 3

Radiology is quite a sensitive field of medical care and it also serves a very crucial purpose. Doctors and surgeons rely on the findings of the radiologist and they devise their treatment and their surgery accordingly. Many a times, certain diagnostic procedure in radiology can cause harm to the patient.

A case cited by Asch & Wright (1997) talks about a patient with hepatic cirrhosis and a mass occluding a very critical condition. This mass does appear malignant but the patient cannot be treated before a biopsy is done. This therefore raises the question of wisdom of the procedure and creates difficulty for the radiology. If the cancer is left untreated, it can cause great harm to the patient. On the other hand, the patient can suffer great risk if the biopsy needle is mishandled.

Another procedure related ethical dilemma is reaction to the contrast material or death during a procedure. If the patient has listed him or herself as do not resuscitate (DNR), the registered nurse therefore is put on the question of whether to treat this condition or not. This is crucial because maybe the patient was DNR for the illness that he was suffering from. The reaction to the investigating material was totally unexpected and it can be treated successfully.

Other dilemmas that can arise in this case are problems from misdiagnosing. If a person gets a CT done and the radiologist overlooks a possible malignancy. As it is known, a malignancy spreads very quickly and should be diagnosed in time. In these cases, the nurse or the radiologist can both be charged with negligence.