Describe an ethical situation you have witnessed or potentially could experience within your nursing practice.

Compare two ethics concepts discussed in week 2 content.

Describe an ethical theory or principle that could guide you in this process.

Please use this reference 

Beth Perry Black, P. R. (2020). Professional Nursing. St. Louis, Missouri: Elsevier Inc."

One possible ethical dilemma that may occur to the nurses is the treatment of a patient who has nursing unable to make decisions for himself/herself and the patient has no durable power of attorney, no living will or next of kin. For instance, an 85-year-old man is transferred from a nursing care facility suffering from aphasia and confusion secondary to a stroke. A patient needs a procedure but cannot give his/her consent. Since the patient did not have a written directive or an appropriate surrogate, the nurse has to decide what is best.

Two fundamental ethical imperatives that may be used as a framework are respect for autonomy and beneficence. Again, the aspect of autonomy means that the nurse should look at what the patient would prefer if he or she were capable. But the principle of beneficence holds the view that the nurse should do well to the patient, and this may include going ahead to perform a suggested procedure. There is an ethical dilemma and conflict of interest that has to be analyzed before making decisions about patients and ethical standpoints.

 Other ethical frameworks such as principlism could also be used to analyze the situation. Principlism refers to the four medical ethics principles outlined in Beauchamp and Childress' framework: The four values of clinical practice that should be followed are: self-governance, do good, no harm and fairness. If the weight and application of each of these principles regarding the best moral decision to be made in response to this particular helpless patient was to be compared, then it would be possible to make a more ethical decision. Evaluation of ethical issues involving ethical theories in routine enables the enhancement of ethical decision making.

 When nursing is confronted with what Horn (2013) refers to as ‘the tough cases’ the ethical models serve as a means of assisting the nurse in determining the right thing to do according to core ethical principles inherent to the profession. Feel free to ask me anything else if you need to know more.