Business Ethics

Code of Ethics/Workshop 5

Nurses support and enable individuals, families and groups to maintain, restore or improve their health status. Nurse also care for and comfort when deterioration of health has become irreversible. A traditional ideal of nursing is caring and nurturing of human beings regardless of race, religion, status, age, gender, diagnosis, or any other grounds.

Nursing care is based on the development of a helping relationship and the implementation and evaluation of therapeutic processes. Therapeutic process includes health promotion, education, counseling, nursing interventions and empowerment of individuals, families or groups. It helps individuals make choices in regards to their health care.

Nurses are independent moral agents and sometimes they have a personal moral conflicts that makes them uncomfortable with participating in certain procedures. Nurses have a moral obligation to the profession, but they are morally entitled to refuse to participate in procedures which would violate their moral beliefs. Nurses accepting positions where they maybe called on to go against their own moral beliefs, should inform their employer. Their employer and their coworkers have a responsibility to ensure that they're not discriminated against.

Nursing practices is present in a variety of settings. Any setting can be affected by factors which are not within a nurse's control or influence. These include resource constraints, institutional policies, management decisions, and the practice of other health care providers. Nurses also recognize the potential for conflict between an individual's needs or the needs of a group or community. Such factors may affect the degree to which nurses are able to fulfill their moral obligations and/or the number and type of ethical dilemmas they may face.

A code of ethics focuses on the morals and ideals of the profession and provides a working framework for nursing practice. Nurses can use the code of ethics as a guide for

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direction and resolution of ethical dilemmas. It is not intended to cover all the aspects nurse should consider, but can be used as an aid in further consideration of ethical concerns in nursing.

I have created a code of ethics to:

a. Identify the fundamental moral commitments of the profession.

b. Provide nurses with a basis for professional and self reflection and a

guide to ethical practices.

c. Indicate to the community the values which nurses hold.

Code of Ethics

1. Nurses will respect individual needs, values, and culture in the provision of nursing

care. Nursing care for any individual should not be compromised because of ethnicity, gender, spiritual values, disability, age, economic, social or health status, or any other grounds. Respect for an individual's needs includes recognition of the individual's place in a family and the community. For this reason, others should be included in the individual's care. Respect for an individual's needs, beliefs and values includes culturally sensitive care, and the need for comfort, dignity, privacy and alleviation of pain and anxiety as much as possible.

2. Nurses will respect the rights of individuals to make informed choices in relation to

their care. Individuals are entitled to make decisions related to

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