Introduction All nurses are responsible for maintaining and enhancing the reputation of the profession. Nurses should act at all times in accordance with ethical healthcare practices, actively promote nursing ethics, and foster public trust and confidence in the nursing profession (SNB, 1999). What is ethics? Ethics is the study of what should be done (Kerridge, Lowe and McPhee, 2005), the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group. Ethical decision making in a health care system is undertaken to enable health professionals to increase their awareness of ethical issues involved in their practice and to guide them in arriving at sound, justifiable decisions (Amado, 2004). In the clinical setting, it requires a trained sensitivity to make good ethical decisions to ethical issues and a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects of a decision and weighing the …show more content…
It is a legal document that you sign in advance to inform the doctor treating you (in the event you become terminally ill and unconscious) that you do not want any extraordinary life-sustaining treatment to be used to prolong your life. Consent is to be obtained from the subject or his/her legally authorized representative in circumstances that encourage and preserve the subject's free choice to participate; and the investigator communicates in language that is understandable to the subject. Making an AMD is a voluntary decision (Ministry of Health, 2007). In this scenario, no AMD form has been signed by Alvin and no legal documents have been mentioned. Therefore, there is no signed informed consent obtained from Basil. In law, verbal consent alone is insufficient for termination of life and that ethics committee approval should have been obtained, and perhaps including the opinion from an ethics committee chair (Hooft, 2004). Verbal consent must be documented in case notes legally with legal