Nursing Ethics: Across the Curriculum and Into Practice, Essay Example

Nursing is one of the most challenging professions in the world. The reason is that, it involves different parties for its success and each party is important in its own capacity. Sometimes nurses face ethical dilemmas that prove challenging and sometimes displeasing to patients or his/her families. While working as a nurse in one of the hospitals, a 40-year-old woman was brought to the hospital. According to the family members, she had initially complained of stomachache. The doctor and I had to conduct preliminary test on certain common diseases. The test result showed that the patient had cancer of the colon, which she had lived with for almost one and a half years.

According to the doctor’s report, the patient required three-week chemotherapy. The patient demanded to know the details of the tests. According to Butts & Rich (2013), truthfulness is what we say and how we say it. Nurses are always obligated to be honest and avoid misleading the patients or the patient’s relatives. Telling the patient truth about her condition would lead to other undesirable consequences. On the other hand, keeping the information from her would be tantamount to dishonesty among nurses. We told the patient to keep calm and thus she would get well upon cooperation. Despite the fact that she insisted to know much about her condition, we had to calm her down and let her know that the problem was manageable and it would not last long before she get well. Besides, we kept the relatives in dark about it and planned to reveal to them a few days before the end of the three weeks.

References

Butts, J. B., & Rich, K. L. (2013). Nursing ethics: Across the curriculum and into practice. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.