Although often used interchangeably, the terms moral and ethical have different connotations in the world of professional ethics. In nursing and other healthcare fields, morals refer more to the overarching set of cultural and social values that guide human behavior. Ethics, on the other hand, are more formal expressions of moral values and therefore ethics are usually codified into written form. For example, nurses and their places of employment usually draft an official code of ethics that clearly distinguishes between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Ethical rules are usually based on morals as well as social and cultural norms.
All nurses can and should continually reaffirm their commitment to moral and ethical ideals. In doing so, they can easily keep in mind the four meta paradigm concepts of nursing theory: person, environment, health, and nursing. Each of these meta paradigm concepts encompasses the nurse's commitment to wellness. For example, I remember the commitment to pers
on when I treat each patient with respect, acknowledging his or her feelings and emotions; respecting his or her treatment decisions; respecting his or her cultural and linguistic background; and paying close attention to verbal and nonverbal communications clues. It is my ethical and my moral duty as a nurse to treat each patient as a person and care for him or her accordingly.
Nurses encounter ethical and moral dilemmas frequently in their profession and often these dilemmas demonstrate the concepts of patient autonomy, beneficence, and non maleficence. The nurse's primary commitment is to patient autonomy: all health care workers should respect the patient's decision to receive or refuse care based on his or her autonomy. However, when a patient is incapacitated in any way or believed to be unable to make decisions affecting their care, then the nurse relies on beneficence versus non maleficence. Non maleficence means doing no harm: as a nurse, I commit to doing no harm that may result
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