Ethics Committees and Consultations, Article Writing Example

The article that is being reviewed in this paper is the Nurse Ethics: Innovative Resources for Nurse. This article has been authored by Lucia D.Wocial, Patricia Bledsoe, Paul Heft and Linda Everett.

Paul R Heft, MD is an oncologist ethicist and the director of the warren Fairbanks Centre for medical ethics (FCME) in the Indiana university school of medicine. Patricia Bledsoe MSW, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker and the program manger of the FCME.   These two began the process of facilitating nursing units that are based on ethics.  Lucia D Wocial RN and PHD and Linda Everett PHD, RN NEABC and FAAN played crucial roles in the research from the hospital experiences of the nurses in providing health care.

These authors were qualified to write this article because they formed a team from the academic programs and the hospital environment. They were therefore able to look at the role of ethics in both the patient car environment and in the academic programs for training of the students.

Before the development of the ethical programs, the nurses were enduring lots of ethical problems in proving health care to the patients.

In the effort to develop the program, the nurse ethicist split the roles and responsibilities between the scholarly environment of the Indiana university nursing school and the Clarion Hospitals where the nurse ethicist was based to provide nurses with the resources they needed in the providing care.

In the academic environment, the work of the nurse ethicist was to look at the real world perspective of the ethical challenges.  The clinically based nurse ethicist was attached to Indiana university nursing school to participate in the classroom academic ethics that prepared students for the real work.

Clarion health is one of the largest health care institution in US employed more than 5000 nurses in 2008 and is the very first to practise  ethics in  nursing  as an advocacy and` moral agent.

The clinical ethics activities involve education, consultation and research. The nurse ethicist sits at the Clarion ethics committee and has the role of creating a less formal nursing consultation for the trainees.

As a nurse administrator, I would ensure that the nurses in my team are able to access informal consultation. This would help especially in cases where the nurses uncomfortable with accessing the formal ethic consultation.  It is important that the nurses are provided with access to expert advice in undertaking their duties. As a nurse administrator, I would create and sustain a structure that provides a willing ear for destabilised nurses to process moral distress.   It is important that the informal ethical services compliment and is not a replacement for the existing formal ethics consultation mechanisms.

Another informal consultation mechanism for the nurses in the hospitals would be to start a monthly electronic nursing newsletter that would address the issues affecting the nurses. One of the weekly columns would be on Questions to the Nurse Ethicist. Nurses would be encouraged to send questions through emails that will be answered here. In addition all the issues that that have been generated through both the formal and informal means that would help the entire staff will be posted on these weekly columns. The nurse administrator plays very crucial roles in providing direct patient care. He or she is in a position to support ethical nursing programs.

References

Wocial, LD, Beldsoe P, Helft, PR, and Everett, LQ.  (2010). Nurse Ethicist: Innovative resource for nurses.  Journal of Professional Nursing, 26(5), 287-292.