The Importance Of Ethical Issues In Nursing

It is a critical duty of a nurse to participate in end-of-life situations that require their quick responsiveness to react on the current emergency or need. The nurses that face mostly this stress are the ones assigned in a critical care unit or in the intensive care unit. There are different factors that contribute on this anxiety that is being felt by the nurse. It is necessary to be equipped with knowledge and skills to be able to work as an effective critical care unit nurse. On a study conducted by Ulrich et al. (2010), one of the ethical issues that contribute to a nurse’s stress on practice is their participation on end-of-life decision making. Their study had concluded that at least 26.2% of their registered nurse participants had issues …show more content…
Nurses face difficulties in decisions and perceptions vary as well depending on their experience in handling such practices. End-of-life practices has been accepted as a practice on critical units especially in Europe, mostly limiting life-support treatment relating to withdrawing of started treatment therby shortening dying process. Ulrich et al. (2010) stressed that the participation itself of nurses bring them hesitant on participating on end-of-life decision making. Inexperienced nurses mostly, find this situation as a major stress and often times leads to an emotional or moral distress rather than with members who had experienced it already. For experienced individuals working in the ICU, the study of Robichaux & Clark (2006), had brought up that nurses stood against some practices that are felt not rightly given. There were certain tools and studies that supported improving nurse 's perception on practices of such, increasing knowledge and skills in handling critical care units focusing more on improving care given to treat death in a good manner, these were the studies of Hansen et al. (2009) and Beckstrand et al. (2006) both aiming to benefit both the nurse and