Ethical Issue Related to Mandated Reporting (Essay Sample)

Ethical Issue Related to Mandated Reporting
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Ethical Issue Related to Mandated Reporting
In everyday nursing practices, nurses are struggling to keep up with ethical challenges when giving their patients care. As a result, a nursing career is a career that deals with ethical dilemmas. In the clinical arena and daily nursing practices at least one patient presents a dilemma to the nurses. In this research, this paper present a case of a 20-year-old female who is pregnant and back Hispanic in a critical condition following a greasy road accident. The nurse who received her is faced with an ethical dilemma because the woman is a Jehovah Witness believer, and she required blood transfusions because she is suffering from internal bleeding. Moreover, the young female is in a critical condition and needed fast medication and care because she is subjected to a life-threatening condition. For this reason, the nurse advised her to have a blood transfusion and emergency surgery as an attempt to save the growing fetus and her life. This is because she showed symptoms of internal bleeding. However, the patient declined the idea of blood transfusion and also rejected the nurse’s idea of surgery too. Her refusal to have a blood transfusion and surgery was based on her fear and beliefs on the scripture.
Consequently, the doctors and the nurses attending her are confused on what to do; either to save her life and that of the fetus or to respect her religious belief. However, in case the doctors and the nurses go the patient’s way, they would have comprised the standards set for health care. On the other hand, ignoring the patient's belief in an attempt to save her life would be going against her wish. Consequently, the nurses decided to neglect the patient and after one day the patient and the fetus passed on. As a result, this case calls for a virtue ethical principles and theory to help solve the situation without blaming the nurses and the doctors for causing death to the patient and her fetus due to neglect.
Firstly, I feel that, as a nurse, it was important to report the situation in good time to avoid future blame especially after the death of the patient. One of the ethical issue that must be embraced in the nursing career is communication, confidentiality, and focusing on meeting the needs of the patient. Secondly, I am convinced that the nurses should be bound to keep up with foundational duties, moral values, and principles required in the nursing profession. For these reasons, I feel the doctors who were attending the patient in the case above acted with negligent contributing to the death of the patient and her fetus. Consequently, it was unethical for the doctors not to communicate the situation to the right authority. The nursing profession requires nurses to practice integrity and reason very fast when faced with a complex situation that require making decisions.
According to Corey et al. (2014), the healthcare environment demands that the nurses should always meet the multifaceted requirements of the patients. However, it is normal for an ethical issue to crop up where a nurse can question his or her morals as either "right" or "wrong" based on the nursing professionalism and decision made towards attending a patient or not. For this reason, it was mandatory to report this case using the correct standards of making a report. However, on the other hand, it was critical for the nurses involved in the situation to face head-on because they failed to report the case (Zeranski & Halgin, 2011). Additionally, it seems questionable on whether the nurses observed a balance between the nursing values and standards set to save the life of patient and aggressive physiological attempts to prolong the life a patient but with no fruitful outcome. Consequently, the neglect decision made by the nurses is an unethical decision that questions the professionalism of the nurses.
In this case, the mandated reporter is supposed to report this case. The nurse mandated to do the reporting is supposed to notify immediately the nursing officer who is in charge of the nursing institution or an agency who is designated to make the final report. However, the nurses would have made a report directly to the emergency department. The mandated reporter is supposed to give facts and full information about what happened. However, the current case can be based on cultural and religious barriers that influenced the ethical challenge. Additionally, there are other issues such as lack of healthcare providers, scarcity of resources, and financial barriers that can hinder mandatory reporting (Schmeidel et al., 2012). According...