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Ethical Principles

The document outlines key ethical principles in nursing, including autonomy, freedom, veracity, justice, nonmaleficence, beneficence, fidelity, confidentiality, and rights. It emphasizes the importance of these principles in guiding nursing practice and ethical decision-making, particularly in complex situations like abortion and euthanasia. Additionally, it discusses the Nursing Code of Ethics as a formal statement of shared values and standards for professional conduct.

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Fritz Angelo Bullon
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5 views

Ethical Principles

The document outlines key ethical principles in nursing, including autonomy, freedom, veracity, justice, nonmaleficence, beneficence, fidelity, confidentiality, and rights. It emphasizes the importance of these principles in guiding nursing practice and ethical decision-making, particularly in complex situations like abortion and euthanasia. Additionally, it discusses the Nursing Code of Ethics as a formal statement of shared values and standards for professional conduct.

Uploaded by

Fritz Angelo Bullon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ETHNICAL

PRINCIPLES
1. AUTONOMY
- The right to make one's own decision
- The right of an individual to govern their actions according to their
own reasons and purpose
- An autonomous action is one in which the agent acts intentionally
with an understanding of the situation and effects of the action and
free of external influencing characteristics

In biomedical ethics, the principle of autonomy decrees that patients


be treated as autonomous decision-makers who are entitled to decide
for themselves what will be done to their bodies
TYPES OF AUTONOMY
A. Freedom of action-EX: Pt. right to leave hospital against his physician
advise

B. Freedom of choice- EX: Pt. Right to obtain primary health services from
either a physician or a nurse practitioner

C. Effective deliberation-EX: right of a rational pt. to set appropriate goals


according to priority and identifying method to achieve the goal
2. FREEDOM
- The principle decrees that patients be exempt from control
by others to select and pursue personal health goals
- The principle should be observed by the staff nurses when
planning pt’s care to explore the pt’s goals for care on
admission to a health agency and implement measures to
achieve the goals to show respect for pt. freedom and
dependency
3. VERACITY
- The obligation to tell the truth
- The principle of truth telling requires professional caregivers to provide
patients with accurate, reality-based information about their health
status and care or treatment prospects.
- When informing pt. about his health status, available care measures,
a professional caregiver is responsible for making explanations
accurate, complete and comprehensible.
- truth-telling is ethical concern for nurses, because through this the
basis for mutual trust between patient and nurses and it is the basis
for pt.’s hope of benefit from nursing services
4. JUSTICE
- The obligation to be fair to all people
- The principal directs that persons who are likely in morally relevant aspects to
be treated alike and persons who differ in morally relevant aspects are treated
differently
- Questions of distributive justice arises. health care professionals must decide
which criteria to use in conflicting claims of care, so that scarce resources are
fairly distributed.
- Compensatory justices are raised when an individual or group has experienced
undeserved health hazards or unfair distribution.
- Retributive justice arise when one person or group has unfairly escaped
burden or exerts undue hardships on another. It is called when an employer
fails to correct a known safety hazard that later injures an employee.
5. NONMALEFICENCE
- The obligation not to harm to other people
- The principle indicates that the individual is morally obliged to avoid
harming others
- The principle is included in the Hippocratic oath “I will use treatment to
help the sick according to my ability and judgment but will never use it
to injure or harm them”.
- The basis for the oft-repeated medical and nursing “naxm primum non
nocere” - first do not harm
- Harm is defeating, or setting back a person's interest through invasive
action by another
6. BENIFICENCE
- the obligation to do good to other people
- the principle indicates that a person is obliged to help others to
advance their legitimate and important interest

2 principles
a. Providing benefits that enhance to others welfare.
b. Balancing the benefits and harms of interventions made on the others
behalf

Professional education provides an awareness that most nursing


interventions are capable of producing undesirable as well as desirable
patient outcomes.
7. FIDELITY
- The obligation to be faithful to the agreement and

responsibilities one has undertaken or to do what one has

promised.
- The principle holds that a person should faithfully fulfill his

duties and obligations.


- It is important in nursing practice because a pt.’s Hope of

relief and recovery rests on evidence of the caregiver’s

conscientiousness.
8. CONFIDENTIALITY
- The right to privacy with respect to one's personal life
- The principle provides caregivers should respect a pt.’s Need

for privacy and use of personal information about him only to

improve care.
- Nurses should practice confidentiality to decrease patient

vulnerability and shame from widespread knowledge of

personal information divulged during care.


9. RIGHT
- It is an entitlement to behave in a certain way under
certain circumstances such as a nurse entitlement to
freely express personal beliefs and preferences by voting
in a political election
- Prerogative right is to define another's behavior in
selected situation
- A right is also a claim to a specific good, service or
prerequisite.
2 KINDS OF RIGHT
Conventional - are entitlement that derive from
conventional structures like the right to contract
services, became licensed to practice nursing.
Moral - derives from human nature and
independent of environmental circumstances.
The right life, liberty , etc.
ETHICAL- DECISION MAKING

A process in which the nurse, the client,


the client's family and the healthcare
team make decisions taking into
consideration personal and
philosophical viewpoints, the
Philippines Nursing Code of Ethics and
Ethical Principles.
CONDITIONS FOR ETHICAL
DECISION MAKING
- Abortion
- Euthanasia
- Organ Transplant
- Artificial insemination
- Cloning
NURSING CODE OF ETHICS

- A code of ethics is a formal statement of group’s ideas and values.


- It is a set of ethical principles that is shared by the members of the
group, reflects their moral judgment over time, and serves as a
standard for their professional actions.
- It is usually higher than legal standard, they can never be less than
the legal standards of the profession

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