Ethical Issues

This is a research project about ethics. It will be exposed what ethics are, and the influences they have on a person’s personal code of ethics. It will show how critical thinking will be linked to the topic of ethical decision-making. Research has been done through a textbook and the internet to describe the importance of having and using your own subjective opinions and values as well as the importance of thinking outside the box and using researched information in correlation to your own beliefs and ideas. Research has been done via the internet to show why it is important

What is ethics? It is going to be broken down in terms of understanding as to how very important it is to have and use ethics appropriately. In order to understand ethics you need to know what all ethics is composed of. It is a gathering of beliefs values, and perceptions. Starting with ethics, they are the rules and standards that direct me in the decisions that I make in my life and effect my decision making process when it comes to my future job as a nurse. Beliefs are personal opinions often thought of as being true without any research. You can have many different beliefs such as the belief in a particular religion all the way to the belief that all animals should be spayed or neutered. Values are what we use to judge different things in our lives and what we use to estimate how important things are to us. Perception is how we choose to look at things for example how you perceive a person based off the clothes they choose to dress in is a perception. Beliefs are part of value and perception is part of beliefs but all are part of ethics. An easy way to look at it is like a jigsaw puzzle. Everything holds a different picture but once you put them all together, it is complete a picture of you.

In nursing, many issues will turn into ethical dilemmas. It is only through time and practice that we master how to deal with these. It is something that as a nurse you are faced with almost on a daily basis. It may be a DNR order (do not resuscitate), adolescents that are seeking birth control or abortions without parental consent, or a drug addict seeking drugs for pain. The beliefs and values that I hold most dear would be that of a child seeking treatment for STDs, birth control, or abortion without the consent of their caregiver. Given my chosen profession, this would be an ethical dilemma for me to have to deal with. I do not believe that a child that is under the age of 18 would be able to make such a decision for themselves without the direct guidance of a caregiver. The reasons that I feel the way that I feel are based off my own personal code of ethics. It all starts at birth. Your beliefs come about one by one. Then as you get older, you add value to the puzzle, and then comes perception. Looking at the issue in a whole and trying to figure out what I feel versus what is right is a challenging task. It is a method of holism. Holism is the view that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You have to view things in the view of other people’s eyes and what is right not using your own ethics. In nursing there are standards you have to follow. Autonomy, which is the patient,’s right to make decisions concerning healthcare, Nonmaleficence, which is the physician’s obligation to do no harm to the patient, beneficence is the physician’s obligation to promote the patient’s well-being and balance risks and benefits, and justice, which is the obligation to distribute risks and benefits fairly.