Navigating Ethics Counseling

Ethics is always a challenging subject to deal with in the world of nursing. Try as we might to set a specific standard to how things should be decided, the truth of the matter is that we often run into situations that force us to challenge, or even work against, our values. Ethics consultations, then, are important because they act as a support service when encountering ethical conundrums in nursing and how to best deal with them. This paper will examine two articles regarding ethical consultation as it refers specifically to nursing, with the hopes that the information provided will enrich my development as a nurse when I would encounter such situations professionally.

The first article is Ethical difficulties in nursing, educational needs and attitudes about using ethics resources by Cinzia Leuter, Cristina Petrucci, Antonella Mattei, Gianpietro. Tabassi, and Loreto Lancia. This article addresses the need for ethics consultation in Europe, being a fairly new movement. It was found that “the limited availability of ethics consultation services…. fails to meet the frequent and strong requests by health workers to support their ethical difficulties.” (Leuter et al. 2012, p. 348) The overall study conducted involved examining both the ethical knowledge of several nurses and the desire to engage in ethics consultation through a cross-sectional study. Although this didn’t reference a very specific ethical situation that a nurse needed to face, this article and study addressed several concerns that could benefit from ethics counseling. These included: ‘Patient decision making,’ ‘End-of-life’ decisions and management, ‘Conflicts,’ and ‘Fairness and accessibility. (Leuter et al. 2012, p. 348) So the most important factor that ethics counseling applies to would be the ‘end of life’ decision and management, where nurses would have to balance between the struggles of dealing with terminally ill patients. Furthermore, the nurses studied were already dealing with such patients, so the concern arose as to whether or not this study would alter the perceptions in their current professional life. As the study found that these nurses benefitted from ethics consultation, I found the work to be incredibly beneficial to my development as a nurse because it addressed how I can learn about ethics and how to deal with them in the extreme circumstances involving ‘end of life’ decisions and management.

The second article is Wyona Freysteinson’s The ethical community consultation model as preparation for nursing research: A case study. This study focuses on the idea that “community consultation model focuses on the ethical components of research and extends pre-research clinical fieldwork to include a community of individuals for whom the research itself, and the findings, may be of greatest interest and concern.” (Freysteinson 2010, p. 749) This particular study focused on women who had undergone mastectomies, comparing the community experience to people with AIDS (p. 750). Having the women look at their unclothed reflection in the mirror, the study was intended to follow the vein that “community collaboration is primarily a demonstration of community respect.” (Freysteinson 2010, p. 749) The consultation came from deciding whether or not this would be an appropriate model. The ethical challenge that is addressed by this article is the intervention in which women are strongly influenced to view the reflection of their mastectomy in front of a group of other women. This puts these women in a place of vulnerability that could be argued as emotionally unsafe.

Much like the previous article the second was important to my development because of addressing the necessary responsibilities to put on a patient. This plays a big role in ethics because the dilemma is balancing their needs with your values. Both articles were professionally enriching because of the nature in which they touched upon challenging and emotional subjects that both patients and nurses are likely to face in these scenarios. Ethics consultation, then, is crucial because of the support it provides in navigating these issues.  

References

Freysteinson, W. M. (2010). The ethical community consultation model as preparation for  nursing research: A case study. Nursing Ethics, 17(6), 749-758. doi:10.1177/0969733010379176

Leuter, C., Petrucci, C., Mattei, A., Tabassi, G., & Lancia, L. (2013). Ethical difficulties in nursing, educational needs and attitudes about using ethics resources.Nursing Ethics, 20(3), 348-358. doi:10.1177/0969733012455565