Dignity In Nursing Essay

Dignity is a quality strived for by every human being. It doesn’t discriminate between race or gender. We strive for it throughout our life spa; through our high points and also through our low points. We all feel the need to preserve our dignity. This includes while receiving mental health care. Patients seeking mental health care may be in most need of help in preserving dignity. They feel vulnerable, unloved, and unwanted. They are most likely in their lowest point of functioning and are seeking the help of those who are meant to show the compassion and care needed to recover. Everything human beings do has an ethical dimension and human dignity is connected to ethics. We, as nurses, carry an extra weight in this cause, as in our job is …show more content…
The method of data collection used for this study is called the critical incident technique, which required nurses to self-report incidents experienced between the nurse and patient (Lindwall, Boussaid, and Kulzer 2011). Sixteen psychiatric nurse volunteers agreed to follow a strict set of guidelines in reporting whether the dignity of the patient was preserved or offended in any given situation. Each critical incident was interpreted using five criterion: integrating the text with the reader, fusion of horizons, new questions to the text, summarizing main and sub-themes, and a new understanding (Lindwall, Boussaid, and Kulzer 2011). Through the interpretations, researchers found that psychiatric nurses preserved dignity through allowing themselves to be touched by patients’ stories, seeing the patients’ unspoken wish to be listened to, and also meeting the expressed needs of patients’ (Lindwall, Boussaid, and Kulzer 2011). Researchers found that dignity was offended by creating powerlessness. While the article follows up with an understanding of the interpreted data, I do not feel it gives a true representation of the incidents in which dignity was preserved or