Nurses' Professional Obligations
Nurses have a professional obligation to become accountable to patients who require nursing care. A nurse is responsible for creating an atmosphere in which the human rights, merits, spiritual beliefs, and habits of a patient, family, and society are valued. When working with a patient, a nurse should maintain mental clarity in order to make informed decisions when treating the patient.
Individual Accountability and Liability
A nurse bears individual accountability and liability for the practice of a health practitioner and is also obliged to maintain adequacy through ongoing learning. This is a key ethical principle and the nurse has to sustain a level of personal vitality such that the capability to furnish care is not ruined. During practice, the nurses take charge of risk, are keenly watchful concerning risk and aid in keeping everyone secure in the areas they obtain health care. Since nurses sustain adequacy by continuous learning, they ought to make use of this knowledge with acuity and personal interpretation in agreement with the wants of each person under their care.
Role in Clinical Nursing Practice, Research, Education, and Management
The nurses take upon themselves the extensive role in ascertaining and carrying out satisfactory standards of clinical nursing practice, research, education, and management. Therefore, when a nurse is dealing with patients, he or she should not favor any patient because of the ethnic background. This is considered unprofessional. Furthermore, they should also ensure the tools that are needed during official work are readily available in case of emergency or usage. As a professional, they will appear to be efficient and provide quality services.
Maintaining Professional Relationships
The nurses should maintain a joint and courteous relationship with fellow employees in nursing and other avocations. In order to make this possible, nurses must uphold a climate of assurance that guarantees openness, urges disputing of the status quo and support whistleblowers with good intentions. Furthermore, it is anticipated that nurses who take part in liable reporting of unethical care or situations will be backed by their professional association. In addition, nurses must strive to build trust when relating with co-workers since it is the groundwork of purposeful communication and understanding that establishing this association requires effort.
Ethical Violations and Ethical Dilemmas
The term ethical means a conventional procedure for drawing up valid and compatible choices on the basis of ethical values. Nurses consistently come across conditions that entail ethics for example ethical violations and ethical dilemmas. Ethical violation is the disregarding of basic nursing responsibilities in a condition where the nurse is aware that the choice of action or lack of it is not befitting. Ethical dilemmas are conditions springing up when equally impelling ethical motives, both for and against a specific course of action, are identified and a choice has to be made for example taking care of a young minor who is declining treatment.
Values of Justice and Dignity
Values pertain to standards that are admirable in a person and are not basically as a method of getting to an objective, for example, justice and dignity. When it comes to justice, nurses promote equity and fairness to help people receive the health resources and services accordant to their wants. Dignity is when nurses appreciate the worthiness of every person and recommend publicly the respectful service for all people.
Socio-cultural Issues and Professional Ethics
There are a number of socio-cultural issues that affects professional ethics. The first one relates to remuneration. Poor remuneration of professionals often causes a number of them to resort to unscrupulous ways in order to make ends meet. The second challenge relates to poor infrastructure. The moment the tools of trade that a professional requires are inadequate, this limits the standards that are supposed to be upheld. The final challenge relates to accountability. The moment that there are no laid down mechanisms to foster accountability among members of the profession, this leads to deterioration of the professional ethics.
