Friday, March 22, 2013

Outcome 7



           Outcome 7 focuses on integrating professional standards of moral, ethical, and legal conduct into the care of persons, families, groups, communities, and populations.  The four main classes that helped me achieve this outcome were Leadership/Management, Professional Nursing Roles, Transcultural Nursing, and Ethics. During the Transcultural Nursing class I completed an assignment pertaining to the similarities and differences of the American Nursing Association’s Code of Ethics and the ICN’s Code of Ethics. Throughout the Leadership/Management class and the Professional Nursing Roles class I spent time focusing on the six roles of nursing practice and what it means to have morals and be in moral distress. Most importantly, the Ethics class helped cement the foundation and value of nursing ethics by multiple assignments pertaining to abortion, vaccines, adolescents, organ allocation, long term care patient dignity, beneficence and nonmaleficence, mental health, stereotyping, biases, “us vs. them” thinking, appropriate use of translators, and ethical culturally competent care.
            The six roles of nursing practice include sentry, healer, guide, teacher, collaborator, and leader. There are also many qualities an ethical nurse possesses including moral integrity, honesty, truthfulness, moral courage, advocacy, power, and culturally sensitive care. In my current and future nursing role I will uphold the qualities of an ethical nurse and practice the six roles of nursing daily. Currently, working as a NICU RN I am exposed to moral and ethical decisions constantly due to caring for high risk infants and their families who may have extremely hard decisions to make regarding their infant’s future. Not only am I around ethical dilemmas on a daily basis, I am also subject to moral distress due to attachment to the infants or struggling with the decision family members have had to make for their little one. I will remember to provide parents with support, guidance, and needed information regarding difficult decisions and respectfully accept their decisions. I will care for infants and their families appropriately without bias or “us vs. them” thinking.

No comments:

Post a Comment