Ethical issues in nursing
practice
Professional commitment is shown through
A desire to help,
A sense of obligation,
Efforts to enhance competence.
Professional accountability depends upon an
individual sense of
responsibility and personal integrity.
• ICN code for nurses was formed in 1933.
• While the international code of nursing ethics
accepted in 1953.
• In 1973 the new ICN code of ethics was
approved. It identifies four major responsibilities
of the nurse:
• Promote health.
• Prevent illness.
• Restore health.
• Alleviate suffering.
Ethical decision making:
• Society is rapidly changing its attitude about major ethical
issues.
• New emphasis on equal rights and individual rights bring up
issues such as changes in the role of women.
• Changes in health care from remedies to preventive
medicine.
• Expand in the role of patient or client in making a decision
toward his health.
• Changing social attitudes about birth control, sterilization,
abortion, and the possibility of genetic manipulation
• Having to make decisions on ethical issues is a contributing
factor to stress in nurses work .
• Ethics is a personal matter because every person has an
individual concept of what is good and what is evil.
Bioethical issues
• Are concerned with problems associated with biology or
the field of medicine, mainly that are related to birth and
to death, and life supporting measures.
• ………..To birth: Involve:
• Processes that prevent conception.
• Terminate pregnancy maturity.
• Process that enable conception and pregnancy to occur
through direct intervention rather than through normal
developments.( Sterilization, contraception, and abortion
on the one hand, and test-tube conception and artificial
insemination.)
Sterilization
• The reason for elective sterilization.
• Meaning of eugenic sterilization> A couple
who fears giving birth to a defective baby
because of a genetic trait.
• The choice in front of the male to do
vasectomy or the female to do tuballigation.
• ( Some state still permit
compulsory eugenic sterilization of
certain prison and mental hospital
inmates to prevent conception of
children with various disorders
who might become a finical burden
to society)
Abortion
• Elective abortions performed has
increased and the procedure has become
a major bioethical issues. Abortion is a
deliberate termination of the life of a fetus
before the end of the sixth month of
gestation.
(Contraversery exists about
whether
the fetus is actually a human
being before that time)
• (In 1973, the united state supreme court ruled
that it was unconstitutional to prohibit a women
from having an abortion during the first three
months of pregnancy)
" Until that ruling was made,
Physicians
• Generally were called upon to offer a medical
judgment as to whether a dangerous pregnancy
should be terminated by therapeutic abortion"
• "The federal government now permits
abortions to be performed until the end of
six month" the consent of a spouse is not
required for an abortion to be performed.
Age of consent of a spouse is not required
for an abortion to be performed. Age of
consent and parental consent are issues
in this procedure when minors are
involved.”
Contraception
The contraversery questions around are
1.Whether individuals have a right to control
parenthood?
2.Which type of contraceptive method is
best?
3. Who should practice contraceptive?
4.At what age contraception would be used?
Age of consent
• Children who are under the age of
eighteen years may be sexually active and
require health care because of pregnancy
or sexually transmitted diseases.
• Some student ask the physician or school
nurse for birth control devices.
Artificial insemination
• Because Various reasons, including
impotence or an inability to carry a child,
alternative means of conception may be
pursued. The donor of the sperm may be
the woman's husband or another man; the
woman in whom the sperm fertilized egg is
implanted may be the donors wife or
another woman (surrogate mother).
1.The legitimacy of the child produced.
2. The paternal/ maternal rights of the
man and woman who participate in this
alternative form of conception.
3. If the couple is later separated or
divorced, custody and visiting rights of
the child may also be a problem.
Genetic research
• How much power should present
generations assume in making decisions
about the nature and characteristics of
future generation?
• Who should regulate genetic research and
its uses?
• cloning of human being gives rise to many
unanswered question
•
•
Genetic screening discovered the potential
parents are carriers of recessive genes that
could cause disorders, in future offspring.
Nurses must remember that in this area, as in
all other situations, they are ethically
committed to a nonjudgmental attitude, to
honest, and to protecting the confidentiality
and right to privacy of the client.
Test tube conception
A conception in between the woman ovum and the
husband sperm in the test tube . The fertilized
ovum was then implanted in her uterus.
1. It is a medical-scientific achievement.
2. The others, including theologians, expressed
great concern about the unnatural method of
uniting the fathers sperm with the mothers ovum.