The Role of Ethics in Adult Intensive Care Nursing

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The Role of Ethics in Adult Intensive Care Nursing
Introduction
According to the International Council for Nurses (ICN, 2012), nurses have four basic responsibilities: to promote health, to prevent sickness, to restore health and to alleviate suffering. In addition, the ICN Code of Ethics states that a respect for human rights is an essential part of the profession, including cultural rights, the right to life and choice, to dignity and to be treated with respect.
While these responsibilities and guiding principles outline the scope of nurses’ work, they may at times conflict with each other or with the prevailing social norms.
Nurses are confronted with ethical dilemmas in many areas of practice. These dilemmas can be of great or minor magnitude, with a varying degree of moral, legal and ethical consequences. Treating adults in an intensive care unit, nurses may be confronted with ethical considerations that require immediate attention, as the intensive or critical care units include emergent and life threatening conditions.
The following paper examines the issue of ethics in the nursing profession, specifically focusing on critical care units, by analysing a case study in which the patient and the nurse were faced with ethical dilemmas. In adherence with the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s guidance regarding maintaining confidentiality and anonymity in academic work (NMC, 2010), the details of the case were altered in order to maintain discretion.

Literature Review and Case Study
Ethics
Commons and Baldwin (1997) make a distinction between values and ethics. While values are defined as “the personal meaning attached to different situations,” ethics are defined as “an integrated body of principles that are coherent and well developed” (p. 3).

Ethics and nursing
The ICN Code of Ethics is based on four elements; nurses and people, nurses and

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