Advanced practice nurses (APNs) are very important when it comes to finding and fixing ethical problems in healthcare. This essay looks at three ways that APNs help solve ethical problems.
- Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Communication: APNs help healthcare workers make ethical decisions by encouraging them to work together and talk to each other openly. Working together can help you see things from different points of view, which can help you understand ethical problems better. (Ash & Miller,2021) say that working together across disciplines is important for making ethical decisions because it makes sure that different points of view and areas of knowledge are taken into account.
- Ethical Leadership and Advocacy: Advanced practice nurses show ethical leadership by speaking up for patients and encouraging everyone on the healthcare team to act in an ethical way. As moral leaders, APNs can help others make choices that are moral. According to Ash & Miller (2021) ethical leadership makes organizations more ethical and helps make sure that ethical problems are dealt with properly.
- Utilization of Ethical Decision-Making Models: APNs use ethical decision-making models to carefully look at and solve ethical problems. Models like the “Ethical Decision-Making Framework” or the “Four-Principal Approach” give structured advice on how to think about ethical problems. By using these models, APNs can make sure that the ethical issues in a case are carefully looked at.
Description of Ethical Dilemma
At one point, in my job as an advanced practice nurse, I had to deal with a very difficult ethics problem. I saw a patient whose condition was life-threatening but who refused a treatment that could have saved her life because of strong religious views. This complicated situation affected a lot of people, such as me, other healthcare workers, worried family members, and the healthcare institution. The moral problem made me think about important issues like how to combine the need to respect the patient’s autonomy, the duty to provide helpful care, and the duty to protect life.
Ethical Analysis
To figure out how to solve this problem, we need to think about moral ideals like justice, autonomy, and beneficence. The American Nurses Association Code of Ethics stresses how important it is to protect patients’ right to make their own decisions while also taking care of their health (Rushton et al,2021). The problem is that there is a conflict between the healthcare team’s duty to help the patient and the patient’s right to be left alone.
Recommendations
Cultural Competence Training: Give healthcare workers cultural competence training to help them understand different belief systems and talk to patients who are having religious ethical problems better.
Provide Ethics Consultation Services: Make sure that healthcare institutions have ethics consultation services to help people make decisions in tough ethical situations. (Ash & Miller,2021)
Advance Care Planning: Encourage conversations about advance care planning to deal with possible ethical problems ahead of time, including patients, their families, and healthcare workers in the decision-making process.
Conclusion
Working together, being an ethical leader, and using decision-making models are all important ways for advanced practice nurses to help solve ethical problems in healthcare. The suggestions given are meant to help healthcare workers deal with ethical problems in a way that is patient-centered and morally sound.
References
Rushton, C. H., Swoboda, S. M., Reller, N., Skarupski, K. A., Prizzi, M., Young, P. D., & Hanson, G. C. (2021). Mindful ethical practice and resilience academy: Equipping nurses to address ethical challenges. American Journal of Critical Care, 30(1), e1-e11.
Ash, L., & Miller, C. (2021). Interprofessional collaboration for improving patient and population health. In The doctor of nursing practice essentials (pp. 163-196). Jones & Bartlet.
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