Nursing is a multidimensional profession, and nurses themselves are continuously faced with confronting a variety of ethical dilemmas within their practice each and every day. These dilemmas can arise from situations involving colleges, governing parties, clients or the family of clients. It can be difficult to differentiate morality from ethics, as they both go hand in hand. Morals involve the principles of what an individual believes is right or wrong, and depicts how they factor what is good or bad (Burkhardt, Nathaniel & Walton, 2014). On the other hand, ethics is a moral principle where an individual uses thought processing and decision making to gauge a situation (Burkhardt, Nathaniel & Walton, 2014).). As a student nurse I have experienced …show more content…
Throughout this paper, I will be reliving an ethical dilemma I was a bystander to and will use the IDEA ethical decision-making tool to analyze the event.
The Case
As part of our first year Clinical Practice Experience (CPE) we took on the care aid role in a residential care facility. I was placed in a facility that was slightly different than most, as it was separated into what they called cottages. To elaborate on this, each cottage had its own kitchen, dining area, and living room; totaling to about 6 different cottages. Myself and another student worked together in one of these cottages, where we assisted the care aids while providing care to our own clients. During one of my shifts, I was assisting a resident with their lunch, as was the other student. We observed a situation arise that left us both feeling uneasy, leading to our report off to the instructor that day. One of the residents diagnosed with dementia, had picked up their toast crusts and thrown them in the garbage. The particular care aid in whom I will be speaking about, got up and scolded the resident because he had only cleared his toast and not the rest of his plate. The resident was confused and began to show aggressive behavior by using vulgar langue and swinging his