Ethical Issues In Nursing

The age of a patient and their lifespan considerations, heavily impacts the way nurses will care for a patient. There is a difference in care that is provided to cater to each individual patient, and age greatly impacts care. For example, an elderly patient who is suffering from a severe disease, in comparison to a paediatric patient suffering from the same condition, will be treated differently. The medical team would talk to the elderly patient and ask how she would want to be treated, taking into consideration her quality of life in terms of procedures that she may or may not want done during end of life care. The paediatric, given their age, would be treated differently. Being a paediatric patient, parents would be providing consent for her care, and they generally would do whatever was

A child’s quality of life is vastly different to an elderly patients (Gibson, King, Kingsnorth, & McKeever, 2014). However, if the procedure went against the parents’ wishes and did not give consent, the hospital may, in some circumstances, appeal to the courts in order to provide the care to their patient. In a case in Brisbane earlier this year, saw a family’s wish for their child to not receive a blood transfusion be overruled by the court. This then poses an ethical dilemma and a nursing implication for those involved. In order to save the seven year old boy’s life, the hospital went against the wishes of both parents, who were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. Once the boy received the transfusion, the problem then arises of his quality of life, and whether or not he would be seen in a different light by his family and community, as he had ‘ingested blood’ (Dibben, 2015). However, parents and legal guardians must do what is in the best interests of their child, regardless of personal belief and religion, and that was to give the transfusion in order to save the child’s