Four Core Ethical Concepts In Nursing

In nursing practice, the four core ethical nursing concepts are used by the nurses in their practice. Nurses respect patient autonomy with understanding of patient rights, demonstrate beneficence in knowing their duty to actively do good for patients, have the duty not to harm patients, and the duty to treat all patients fairly, without regard to age, socioeconomic status. These core ethical concepts are the great tools nurses can use in facing ethical dilemmas in their everyday practice. There are many ethical issues surround the end-of-life care that nurses play an important role in helping to resolve these ethical dilemmas. Nurses need to understand the difficulty patient and families have to face in making end-of-life treatment and always respect the right of autonomy. The job of health care professionals is to provide detailed information about the benefits, limitations and drawback of different treatments which can be used during …show more content…
The law went into effect on December 16, 2016 to legalize Physician Assisted Suicide in Colorado. Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide support patient “right-to-die”. Euthanasia is referred to as “mercy killing” or “good death” and implies painless actions to end the life of someone suffering from an incurable or terminal disease ( Zerwekh&Garneau, 2015, p. 434). Physician Assisted Suicide has been debated for years because it causes a conflict between nonmaleficence, duty to prevent or avoid doing harm, whether intention or unintentional and autonomy principle, a patient’s right to self-determination without outside control. According to Zerwekh and Garneau (2015), euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide affect nursing practice because a decision to perform Physician Assisted Suicide may involve the nurse. From the ethical point of view, many would consider this ultimate act of mercy, but many would oppose for the right-to