Historical roots and future perspectives related to nursing ethics

Stress Related Workers’ Compensation Claims

The occupational health nurse should maintain confidentiality; ethical principles should not have to be compromised for justice to be served. The author has made recommendations to improve safeguarding of records, promote stress reduction, and support legislation to control disclosure. However, because the legislative trend is toward increased use of health data to assure employer compliance with safety and health laws, health data may be increasingly available to all interested parties.

The development of ethical guidelines for nurses' collegiality using the Delphi method

BACKGROUND

Nurses' collegiality is topical because patient care is complicated, requiring shared knowledge and working methods. Nurses' collaboration has been supported by a number of different working models, but there has been less focus on ethics.

AIM

This study aimed to develop nurses' collegiality guidelines using the Delphi method.

METHOD

Two online panels of Finnish experts, with 35 and 40 members, used the four-step Delphi method in December 2013 and January 2014. They reformulated the items of nurses' collegiality identified by the literature and rated based on validity and importance. Content analysis and descriptive statistical methods were used to analyze the data, and the nurses' collegiality guidelines were formulated. Ethical considerations: Organizational approval was received, and an informed consent was obtained from all participants. Information about the voluntary nature of participation was provided.

RESULTS

During the first Delphi panel round, a number of items were reformulated and added, resulting in 32 reformulated items. As a result of the second round, 8 of the 32 items scored an agreement rate of more than 75%, with the most rated item being collegiality means that professionals respect each other. The item with second highest rating was collegiality has a common objective: what is best for patients, followed by the third highest which was professional ethics is the basis of collegiality.

CONCLUSION

Nurses' collegiality and its content are well recognized in clinical practice but seldom studied. Collegiality can be supported by guidelines, and nurses working in clinical practice, together with teachers and managers, have shared responsibilities to support and develop it. More research in different nursing environments is needed to improve understanding of the content and practice of nursing collegiality.

Nurses’ perceptions of their professional rights

The purpose of this study, which is part of a wider study of professional ethics, was to describe nurses’ perceptions of their rights in Italy. The data were collected by open-ended focus group interviews and analyzed with inductive content analysis. Based on the analysis, three main themes were identified. The first theme “Unfamiliarity with rights” described nurses’ perception that their rights mirrored historical roots, educational content, and nurses’ and patients’ position in the society. The second theme, “Rights reflected in legislation” highlighted that working and professional Italian legislation played a strong role. The third theme, “Managerial barriers for nurses’ rights” underlined the nurses’ perceptions that nursing management had the responsibility to create the conditions where nurses’ rights could flourish. This study intends to contribute to the debate on this underexplored topic.

[Ethical quality of nursing care in Lebanon]

OBJECTIVE

The objective was to reflect on the nurse's role and on the determinants of a responsible choice. In order to do it, we tried to answer the following questions: (1) Are the role and the mission of the nursing body well acquired in Lebanon? (2) Are there international and national norms which govern the accomplishment of this mission? (3) At what point does the mission accomplished by the nursing body procure the patient's safety? (4) What are the factors that modify the performance of the nursing body in Lebanon? And, (5) What are the challenges of a good-quality nursing performance?

METHODS

We conducted a double arm survey. The first one is made on 160 nurses working in 19 hospitals that succeeded to establish until July 2008 (end of study) at least an ethical committee for medical care. The second one was conducted on the heads of the nursing departments in 49 private institutes, 34 public institutes and 16 universities.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The investigated nurses don't know very well the medical and nursing ethics' principles that are very well highlighted in the Husted decisional model and expressed by justice, autonomy, confidentiality, beneficience, veracity and fidelity. This result underlines a fact that affects the nurse's mission and so on the patients' safety. Ninety-four per cent of the nurses think that the education and the communication with the patient is not a priority during their daily work, which hinders the three essential times (analysis, communication and assessment) required to elaborate a freely informed decision. Ethics don't have a solid basis in education.

CONCLUSION

We must be concerned by this diagnostic, but it leads to the hope of being able to find together, through a common reflection, the essential characteristics to assume our responsibilities whether in the medical or nursing domain.