Indeed, today’s nursing environment has exposed nurses to many reasons to be conflicted. For instance, some patients declare wishes to be permitted to die with dignity and request that their wishes are respected. Others may wish that their life support is terminated. It can also involve actions like nurses taking two tablets of oxycodone as ordered but keeping one for herself. From a biblical point of view, I feel it is wrong to help a patient die with dignity. However, from a professional point of view, nurses must advocate and support the patients’ decision including one to make their own decisions. Making decisions in such a situation can cause ethical dilemmas. Having not come across such a situation, I can comment that it is essential for nurses to familiarize themselves with legal and moral issues surrounding the issue (Smith et al., 2016).
Also, in these cases, nurses should possess a basic understanding of the scope of practice and standard of care. Also, they should refer to the code of ethics for nurses with interpretive terms like beneficence, justice, and autonomy. For example, the law permits it and a person (an adult) has the right to be assisted to die at his or her request especially they are terminally ailing and in unmanageable pain. Also, sometimes life-sustaining therapies may prolong suffering at the cost of decreasing the patient’s quality of life. Besides, nurses caring for the patient at the end of life have a professional and moral obligation to follow guidelines depicted in ethical and professional standards (Dahlqvist et al., 2016). Most importantly, nurses should advocate ascertaining the goals of their patients are met while following principles.
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