Leveraging Patient Experience

As a new nurse working in the Emergency Department (ER) at a large teaching hospital I often had the opportunity to work triaging patients. Over the course of a couple of months one patient in particular came to the ER for pain related reasons multiple times and always left against medical advice. Finally, one day when the ER was slow I had a chance to triage this patient again, but this time was different.
We sat and talked about all of the times he had been seen and left and I asked him why he always left AMA. The patient shared that he had been told by many doctors and social workers all about his illness and that he didn’t want surgery but that he just wanted to be comfortable. The patient went on to say that he knew he was going to die without treatment but felt he would die with the treatment as well. The last time I ever saw him he told me that he had a right to make what I felt was a bad choice as long as it was an informed choice. He also shared that he had heard all of his treatment options many times and that he did not want surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. Later when working for a hospice agency the knowledge that I learned …show more content…
In researching a patients right to refuse care I found numerous articles including one by Selde (2015) which confirmed the fact that patients can refuse care as long as they have been informed of their medical options and the risks related to refusing the recommended care. I also came across the Code of Ethics for Nurses written and revised by the American Nurses Association (2015), where provision 1.4 includes the patient’s right to make his own choices and the nurse’s responsibility to support those