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Should Patients Have Access to Truthful Information?
Introduction
Nurses undergo years of training to become certified nurses, yet ethical dilemmas are still becoming more complex than solving common issues. Ethical dilemmas occur when choices need to be made, but the options are not ideal, and the answers are not precise. These ethical dilemmas could undermine the quality of patient care and hamper clinical relationships. Nurses in hospital departments face ethical issues daily, and they need to reconcile with their Code of Ethics to help them solve challenges. Ethical dilemmas occur when nurses are not adequately equipped to complete their responsibilities.
An Ethical Dilemma That Requires A Masters Prepared Nurse to Take A Nursing Position On
An example of a common ethical dilemma pertains to honesty versus withholding patient information in a clinical setting. All patients have the right to know their medical conditions. However, the family members may want to withhold the patients information and protect their emotions (Barlow et al., 2018). Sometimes family members request that their patients be not informed of their medical diagnosis, but the nurse should consider a patients rights. The nurse in this situation has an obligation to ethical principles of fidelity which is a requirement to be faithful and prevent harm to their colleagues.
For nurses, their ethical decision-making skills are rooted in the American Nurses Association (ANA), which was developed to guide them in their responsibilities. Whenever nurses struggle to identify whether a decision is in this ethical dilemma, they can review the ANA ethics. Also, they may benefit from seeking advice from well-prepared nurses. These master-prepared nurses can address situations they may not know how to manage. A prepared nurse can help curb ethical issues by educating their coworkers regarding the Code of Ethics. They can also provide regular training to them regarding recurring issues. Furthermore, masters prepared nurses can cultivate educational environments for regular discussions of ethical problems in their units.
Description of Ethical Dilemma and The Impact on Its Patients, Nursing Practice, And the Research Process
The ethical dilemma is whether a nurse should be honest with the patient or withhold information. Withholding patient information may have different reasons and bear diverse consequences (Haahr et al., 2020). This ethical dilemma of honesty cuts across different settings, and therefore the concept may bear various configurations. Concealing the information may result in serious harm and may undermine autonomy and trust in the nurse. When a nurse is caught up in such a situation, they get confused between being honest with their patient or withholding the information to prevent predictable harm.
Trust is a significant virtue in the patients healing process; it is crucial in a nursing facility, and lack of honesty spells doom to the profession. Lack of honesty increases the patients risk of losing confidence in a nurse, which is significant in achieving better treatment results (Barlow et al., 2018). In the nursing practice, withholding the truth hampers the relationship between the patient and the nurse. While the nursing profession stipulates that patients should be given truthful information, the question of whether it can cause harm still lingers. Concealing information violates the principles of beneficence and autonomy. With the growing interest in ethical dilemmas, research is focusing on educational methods to cultivate ethical decisions. Research has been done on the frequency, types, and levels of ethical dilemmas facing nurses in their day-to-day practice. The moral dilemma lessons have led to more research on ethical codes that protect vulnerable human subjects.
Research Questions Related to The Ethical Dilemma
Do patients want to know the truth about their medical diagnosis? What if the patients family asks for the information to be withheld? When nurses interact with patients, being honest is a pivotal factor that fosters trust between them. Patients place much confidence in their nurses and may feel betrayed when they discover a lack of honesty (Pona et al., 2020). Some patients do want to be told about their diagnoses, contrary to what many nurses think. Families often ask the nurses not to disclose serious diagnoses with a laudable motive to spare their loved ones from the emotional distress of hearing bad news. Withholding information is mainly based on the fear of causing despair to patients (Rainer et al., 2018). This ethical dilemma can be solved by reassuring family members that the disclosure will be done sensitively.
Formulate A Position on This Ethical Dilemma
A truthful and honest communication between the patient is crucial for respect and trust to thrive in the nurse-patient relationship. If the nurses have compelling evidence that the information will cause predictable harm, honesty may be withheld (Pona et al., 2020). An example might be a case when a patient is depressed and may commit suicide. The information should only be hidden when the harm seems likely (Haahr et al., 2020). Although the information is a powerful tool for both harm and good, concealing it from a competent patients will disempower them. Medical ethics place a high value on providing unbiased information to patients. Withholding information from the patient is a violation of the nursing practices, which violates ethical principles of beneficence, nonmaleficence, and autonomy.
Advantages of Information Technology on The Ethical Dilemma
Information technology has a significant influence on the gathering, storage, and retrieval of patient information. With the nature of information technology, data accessibility and manipulation are much easy. The technology offers more expansive access to information and makes it easier to retrieve a patients information. Personal data in a hospital setting may be accessed from the central database by different departments making it challenging to keep patient information. The use of information technology thus increases the honesty of information.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the ethical dilemma of whether patients should have access to truthful information regarding their medical diagnosis has afforded much debate in healthcare facilities. Nurses are often susceptible to ethical dilemmas in the nursing practice because of their leadership roles. They are required to make several decisions to ensure their patients safety and well-being. Nurses can solve their ethical dilemmas by implementing the Code of Ethics throughout their daily routines. The ethical dilemma of honesty versus withholding patient information is a common occurrence in many hospitals. Patients are entitled to know the truth about their health progress and diagnosis. However, family members find it difficult to inform the patient about an undesirable outcome for fear of causing more distress. ANA still vouches for honesty which is a crucial factor in establishing a good foundation for nurse-patient relationships. Lastly, information technology is being leveraged in the healthcare sector to improve access to information. This has made a significant impact on how information is shared across the various databases in the hospitals.
References
Barlow, N. A., Hargreaves, J., & Gillibrand, W. P. (2018). Nurses contributions to the resolution of ethical dilemmas in practice. Nursing Ethics, 25(2), 230-242. Web .
Haahr, A., Norlyk, A., Martinsen, B., & Dreyer, P. (2020). Nurses experiences of ethical dilemmas: A review. Nursing Ethics, 27(1), 258-272. Web.
Pona, A., Huang, W. W., Burrow, R. H., Brodell, R. T., & Feldman, S. R. (2020). The ethical foundation for honesty and the focused use of deception in dermatology. Dermatology Online Journal, 26(11).
Rainer, J., Schneider, J. K., & Lorenz, R. A. (2018). Ethical dilemmas in nursing: An integrative review. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 27(19-20), 3446-3461. Web.
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