Ways Of Knowing In Nursing Case Study

Introduction:

When it comes to Australian hospitals, there are a variety of standards and laws that are put in place for Nurses and Midwives to follow. These are to ensure that things such as privacy, confidentiality and ethics are maintained, and to prevent harm and negligence. This essay will discuss these codes and standards, and how they were breached or upheld in the case study. As well as this, bioethical principles and patterns of knowing in nursing will be defined, and how they relate to the Nurse and patient in the case study will be discussed.

Ways of Knowing:

Nursing depends on the scientific knowledge of human behaviour in health and illness, the aesthetic perception of significant human experiences, and a personal understanding

On the other hand, aesthetics is the art of nursing, which involves empathy, awareness, intuition and experience (Carper, 1978). Such as a Nurses care for a patient, and their treatment of them. Ethics involve ones morals and the ability to differentiate between right and wrong, as well as the use of ethical judgement (Carper, 1978), for example a Nurse knowing that it is ethically and morally wrong to disrespect a patient or a patient’s culture. Finally, the component of personal knowledge in nursing is the use of therapeutic and interpersonal relationships, and self-understanding (Carper, 1978). These for fundamentals allow for an increased level of awareness of the complexity and diversity of nursing knowledge. Each of these components are highly important, and should ideally be used together, as opposed to alone, in order for the best results to be achieved (Carper, 1978). In this case study, the empirics relate to Jason’s medical condition and the use of the compression stocking to prevent pulmonary

These are known as non-maleficence, beneficence, justice, and autonomy (Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2009). Non-maleficence refers to doing no harm, and beneficence refers to doing only good and having the benefits in mind, for example, operating on an unwell patient in order to correct their health prevents harm and benefits the patient (Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2009). Autonomy is the right for one to make their own decisions, this relates to a patient having a say and their own personal opinion when it comes to the medical decisions that are being made surrounding their illness (Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2009). Justice relates to fairness, equality, and treating people equally. Justice can be seen when healthcare professionals treat patients of different cultures the same way they would treat a patient of their own culture (Zwygart-Stauffacher, 2009). In Gemma’s case, non-maleficence and beneficence relate to the fact that she tried to do no harm and do only good by telling Jason to wear his compression stocking, however harm was caused as Jason refused to wear his stocking, and Gemma did nothing more than just advise him to wear it. As well as this, Gemma may have been able to uphold non-maleficence even further if she had advised the Nurse taking over her patients at the end of her shift, that Jason was reluctant to wear his stocking. That way the other Nurses may