PRINCIPLE OF NURSING PRACTICE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

PRINCIPLE OF NURSING PRACTICE - Essay Example Nurses have to have a particular code from which to determine the correct way of tending their patients. To reduce confusion, the Nursing and Midwifery Council created numerous principles that determine how all interactions between nurses and patients should be conducted. The principals established by the 'NMC' are meant to generate a pattern that allows health care workers to avoid issues that might stall patient treatment. There are different factors in the wider society as well as in the healthcare sector that affect nursing ethics. For instance, the reality of evolving and improving technical operations means that health workers constantly have to revise or add to the existing code of medical principles. Nurses are at the fore front of this development as they are the ones that administer the recommended treatments to patients. The situation becomes particularly complicated when they have to make decisions concerning medical developments that have not yet been thoroughly research ed or tested. It is true that a nursing license does not necessarily confirm that a nurse will only engage in ethical nursing practices (O’Carroll and Park 2007). This is why the NMC was created to underline the basic moral and ethical obligations that a practicing nurse is compelled to observe. Nurses are not only compelled to follow the guidelines of the NMC, but also the government’s laws pertaining to the rights of their patients. Nurses can be held accountable for unethical actions by the government. Whenever nurses make ethical decisions that countermand some aspect of the government's rules, they can be held liable in a court of law (Griffiths and Tengnah 2008). There are some circumstances in which implementing the principles denoted by the NMC is difficult or impractical (Nursing and Midwifery Council 2008). For instance, as a student nurse, I observed that many doctors who have patients in the intensive care unit have to work under serious pressure to preserv e the lives of their patients while also remembering to observe the instructions of the patient's family members. There was a patient of mine who was of a religious denomination that did not believe in blood transfusion. Even though my patient was in serious need of a blood transfusion, her family members refused to allow it. Soon was tension between the family members and patient's doctors. At one point, one of the younger doctors suggested transfusing the patient while the nurses diverted the attention of the family members. While this was being seriously considered, the patient began to show small signs of improvement. This averted what might have amounted to a breach of the Principle B which calls for nurses to make decisions on treatment after holding consultations with the patient’s family members because they can be held accountable for their actions. In the intensive care unit, the nursing ethical principle that is easier to apply is Principle C- ensuring that all ris k to the patient is minimized in the course of administering treatment (Lawson and Peate 2009). In all that I do for my patients, or, as mentioned above, collaborate with other medical practitioners in, I always strive to ensure that it is for the betterment of the patient. Most of the time, patients in the intensive care unit are completely dependent on their doctors and nurses. The medical practitioners tending to them are not only charged with prescribing the