Nursing Ethical Dilemma Paper

861 Words4 Pages

Ethical dilemmas Ethical dilemmas existing in today’s health care environments have grown increasingly difficult and complicated due to rapid changes in technology and a rising conflicts between personal, professional and organizational values. A variety of ethical issues have been reported in the nursing literature with most dilemmas related to insufficient resources, unethical or impaired behavior of physicians , abuse of patient rights, national and institutional policies that conflict with quality patient care(Iacobucci ,2012). Ethical dilemma is the situation in which there are two conflicting courses of actions that appear to be right. Doing what is morally right results in a good outcome, doing what is morally wrong results …show more content…

As a problem an ethical dilemma lacks a satisfactory solution. The problem in ethical decision making is that very different ethical choices regarding the same ethical dilemma may result in neither choice being a right or wrong decision. Ethical dilemmas are workplace stressors known to impair the quality of nursing. Unresolved dilemmas can cause feelings of disappointment and powerlessness and hence compromises in patient care, job dissatisfaction, disagreements among health care teams and even burnout (Zydziunaite …show more content…

They influence the culture of an organization and are responsible for creating credibility and trust (Bahreini et al., 2011) when they make decisions in ethical dilemmas. Taking a look at what went wrong and why decision-making failed reveals moral and ethical shortcomings. One must look at the moral and ethical stance of the health care organization and the role of the head nurse’s leadership in creating a culture of values on a ward( Zydziunaite,2015). Ulrich , (2010) found that nurses sometimes are not aware of the options when they are faced with ethical dilemma and that nurses are often inadequately prepared to address them. Musto & Schreiber (2012) adds that nurses suffer from moral distress when they have doubts with their nursing practice and questioning about their decisions. These doubts appear when nurses start thinking how they should or could have acted in problematic situations