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A professional moral compass is developed by intertwining the professional education and personal morals. The professional moral compass helps guide the person through their profession making the best ethical decision. A nurse Uses their professional moral compass to make the best decisions for their patient. Spirituality and culture contribute to how a person views the world. Spirituality and culture helps a person develop how they live their life and how they view life, health and death (Birthmark, 2001 Nurses or healers have held a special place in many cultures.
Nursing practice has grown and matured through both spiritual and cultural beliefs. Nursing philosophy is one of holistic healing and takes patients spiritual and cultural beliefs into account. “Values are ideals, beliefs, customs, modes of conduct, qualities, or goals that are highly prized or preferred by individuals, groups, or society” (Birthmark, 2001, p. 83). Values guide nurses to provide the best possible care for their patients. Values are the foundation in which nursing is built. The core values of the National League of Nursing are caring, integrity, perversity, and excellence (National League for Nursing, n. . ). Nursing is all about the patients and without the core values nurses lose the focus on the patients. Ethical dilemmas are faced everyday in the health care field. Each dilemma is different and provides an opportunity to learn, grow, and examine one’s own morals and ethics. Nurses can learn by talking to and leaning on other nurses who have faced a similar ethical dilemma. Nurses must also understand that what may be an ethical dilemma for them, may not be an ethical dilemma for another. The author believes values are the core of who he is and her nursing practice.
Values are what make every person whole and the understanding that every person has their own set of values is helpful in everyday life. Each person must take their values and not push them off onto another. Believing in those values helps influence nursing practice and makes the author believe in her nursing ability. Values, morals, and ethics are important to nursing practice and are learned through experience. Values, morals, and ethics are important to nursing practice as nurses have people’s lives in their hands. Nurses must make sure they are eloping the patients in the best possible way.
Nurses are obligated to behave and act in a professional manner. Every nurse will encounter a conflict of their values, morals or ethics. How the nurse handles the conflict defines the nurse in their nursing practice. The author has the personal values, philosophy, and worldview that everyone is a person and should be treated with respect regardless of age, gender, race, or diagnosis. This could create an ethical dilemma when a patient is treating the nurse and staff in a less than respectful manner. For example: A patient comes into the Emergency
Room and is under the influence of drugs. The patient is kicking and screaming and spitting on everyone. While the author would like to treat the patient with respect, the patient is making it difficult to do so by acting out. The author is obligated to treat the patient but must go against her philosophy that everyone deserves to be treated respectfully and with dignity. An ethical dilemma that the author often thinks about would be with patient who is admitted with an aortic aneurysm and dissection. The dilemma is that the patient has the same diagnosis her father died from.
When her father was admitted to the hospital with the aortic aneurysm and dissection, everyone told the family that he would be just fine and aneurysm would heal. However, after her father’s death, she researched the diagnosis and found that the prognosis is not good. How does the author would handle this situation? Some of the questions the nurse asks herself are: Does she, who knows and understand the disease process, tell the family that the patient will be fine or does she, give the family the facts? Does she ask to be reassigned due to the close nature of the diagnosis?