Open-Editorial for Autonomy and Respect - myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theOpen-Editorial for Autonomy and Respect. Answer: Clashes between the different principles of nursing have been reported by many healthcare professionals over years. The clash between maintaining of the human dignity and the maintenance of the nursing duties based on principles of beneficence and non maleficence is observed. With the gradual passing of years, the rights of human dignity has been identified as the sense of self worth and self respect possessed by an individual of the nation. Human dignity mainly encompasses the right to fill basic needs like food, shelter and personal safety. In respect to nursing profession, human dignity mainly reflects the aspects of privacy, autonomy and respect of the patients (Jacobs, 2016). Each and every individuals of the nursing profession have to abide by the principal of dignity of the patients where they have to ask for their consent, wait for their approval and make them know about the entire procedure and consequences of the treatment they apply to patients. On the other hand, each and every nurse has to abide by the two principles of beneficence and non maleficence for the betterment of the patients (Cheraghi, Manookian and Nasrabadi, 2014). By the principle of beneficence, nurses need to provide the safest care to patient, which brings the best outcomes on patient health ensuring patient safety and patient satisfaction. By the principle of non-maleficence, the nurse needs to cause no harm to patients. Therefore nurses should provide the best care plan which would not only help patients to get proper service, but also help them to get well and develop their life for betterment (Rehssfeldt et al., 2014). This is for helping the society to strive well and lead happy lives so that the nation gradually gets free from people sufferings for the common good. There has been always a matter of concern when a nurse has to face a dilemma when adhering to more than one principle at a time. There are cases where the patients themselves lose the hope to live or does not want to live anymore may be due to chronic physical suffering or due to severe mental disorders. Often many suffer from severe depression. Such patients request nurses not to help them to survive and this becomes a moral concern for the nurses as their duty is to save peoples lives. (Eskilsson et al., 2015). Nurses who are responsible to save lives of people are in turn requested not to provide any care treatment for them. Here nurses often suffers from dilemma that whether they should save the human dignity or they should maintain their duty of beneficence and non maleficence. The concern of the do not resuscitate is often argued in the medical fields and result in popular debates. While many experts feel that giving freedom to such people who do not want to live is in a way serving them for making them not suffer from the physical or mental pain. Moreover, they also are of the opinion that helping in the end of sufferings of people are in turn helping them to get free of sufferings. This is unaccepted for another set of experts who believe every life is a blessing and putting an end to it when there is a scope of better chance of making the patient service is unethical. These experts suggest that often sufferings make people weak where they no more want to live. However, saving such lives and helping them to make their lives better with evidence based interventions are much more preferable (Santorum, 2014). This argument can be thereby explained as a conflict between benefits of common good and respecting the human dignity. Although every nurse should use both the principles in their care plan but often they face issues with such incidents. These issues are of the main concerns where new nurses face difficulty to take decisions in such situations of ethical dilemma as they get nervous (Girard et al., 2017). However with the gradual handling of such incidents, nurses develop situational awareness where they can take decisions about how to proceed with the cases. Critical reasoning skills are one of the most important skills which help nurses to handle such situations bravely. Moreover the strict laws of protecting human rights which have been introduced by the nations to make the nurses abide by the ethical principles make the situations worse as often nurse get involved in legal complication due to this. Hence serving human dignity and benefits for common good often becomes a concern fo r nurses. References: Cheraghi, M.A., Manookian, A. Nasrabadi, A.N., (2014). Human dignity in religion-embedded cross-cultural nursing.Nursing ethics,21(8), pp.916-928. Eskilsson, C., Carlsson, G., Ekebergh, M. Hrberg, U., (2015). The experiences of patients receiving care from nursing students at a Dedicated Education Unit: A phenomenological study.Nurse education in practice,15(5), pp.353-358. Girard, A., Hudon, C., Poitras, M.E., Roberge, P. Chouinard, M.C., (2017). Primary care nursing activities with patients affected by physical chronic disease and common mental disorders: a qualitative descriptive study.Journal of clinical nursing,26(9-10), pp.1385-1394. Jacobs, B.B., (2016). Respect for human dignity in nursing: Philosophical and practical perspectives.Canadian Journal of Nursing Research Archive,32(2). Rehnsfeldt, A., Lindwall, L., Lohne, V., Lillest, B., Sletteb, ., Heggestad, A.K.T., Aasgaard, T., Rholm, M.B., Caspari, S., Hy, B. Steren, B., (2014). The meaning of dignity in nursing home care as seen by relatives.Nursing ethics,21(5), pp.507-517. Santorum, R., (2014).It takes a family: Conservatism and the common good. Open Road Media.