NURS 3046 Nursing Project
Question:
Answer:
Ethical dilemmas are explicitly associated with healthcare settings. All the healthcare professionals face dilemmas and the dilemmas present in the “end-of-life-care” situation, are most common in clinical practices.
Mrs. Watson was brought by her carer to the emergency department (ED) due to some respiratory distress and the doctors in the ED noticed that the patient was minimally responsive. Based on her old notes, it was found that she is having an advanced bowel cancer. After transferring to the ICU her condition deteriorated and her son was informed to ask what to do in the event of cardiac arrest. Her son revealed that Mrs. Watson wanted to initiate not for resuscitation (NFR) order, which is intentionally withholding or stopping all kinds of life-saving measures when some of the organs of the body fully stops functioning like respiratory or cardiac function. But, the next day her daughter came and she wanted everything to be done against her mother’s decision.
Here, ethical dilemma has been clearly found. The request of the daughter and the patient’s decision placed the healthcare professionals in a difficult position of either satisfying the request of the daughter or honouring the wishes of the patient. The condition of patient was constantly deteriorating and in this regard, patient’s autonomy should not be threatened (Chen-Scarabelli et al. 2015). The autonomy of patient takes precedence over beneficence. In order to resolve the dilemma, I would conduct a meeting with the son and the daughter regarding the issue. I would make them understand that the decision of not-resuscitating is influenced by the principle of non-maleficence and any heroic measure to the patient who is at the end stage of life could have some adverse effects and that will be a direct contribution towards poor care (Peicius, Blazeviciene and Kaminskas 2017).
References
Chen-Scarabelli, C., Saravolatz, L., Hirsh, B., Agrawal, P. and Scarabelli, T.M., 2015. Dilemmas in end-stage heart failure. Journal of geriatric cardiology: JGC, 12(1), p.57.
Peicius, E., Blazeviciene, A. and Kaminskas, R., 2017. Are advance directives helpful for good end of life decision making: a cross sectional survey of health professionals. BMC medical ethics, 18(1), p.40.
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