Registered nurses (RNs) should adopt an active position, especially when the basic patients’ rights are threatened. This paper evaluates the hypothetical clinical situation from this perspective. The situation will be described below in detail. The patients’ rights will be examined, and the consequences of their violation will be evaluated. The actions of other healthcare providers will be closely considered. The Bioethical Decision Making Model will be applied in the discussed situation. The discussion of nursing advocacy in the clinical setting will be provided. The nurse’s role, as a patient advocate, will be specified. In general, modern nurses should pay closer attention to patients’ rights and prevent any potential threats.
Clinical Situation
It is possible to analyze these issues using the following hypothetical clinical situation. A given RN always fulfills all her functions properly and respects patient autonomy, as well as other related rights. Informed consent is considered as one of the major aspects in this regard. However, other healthcare professionals do not always act in accordance with the principles of informed consent. In this hypothetical situation, they did not get permission from the patient before initiating their intervention. Although they were motivated by positive intentions, they violated a person’s rights, as informed consent was required by all regulations under such conditions. Thus, these healthcare professionals did not get complete informed consent from the patient and initiated their intervention. The RN became aware of this fact only after some time. There is a need for developing the optimal strategy for dealing with such a situation, as well as avoiding similar problems in the future.
Application of the Bioethical Decision Making Model
Although different models may be applied for examining this situation, the Bioethical Decision Making Model seems to be the optimal option. The reason is that it allows using a step-by-step procedure to apply the analyzed situation, determine the responsibilities of all the involved parties, as well as the optimal solution. The major ethical principles include beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice. As the major question under examination is the proper nurse’s strategy under the conditions of other healthcare professionals’ violating the principle of patient autonomy, it is necessary to consider the above ethical principles closely. It is evident that the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence are also violated by the actions of professionals. The reason is beneficence should be understood not only in an objective sense (through evaluating the corresponding health indicators), but a subjective one as well (as a degree of addressing patients’ rights).
If this aspect is neglected, the results of intervention can be negative because the important patients’ needs are not satisfied. Even if the actor’s intentions are positive, it cannot justify the intervention without considering the interests and needs of a given patient. The principle of justice requires the non-discriminative treatment of all patients. At the same time, it also requires to implicitly utilize all the possible knowledge and information to generate the maximum possible results. Therefore, the healthcare professional neglecting the position of a patient regarding a particular treatment decision does not follow the principle of justice to the maximum extent.
It is reasonable to apply all steps of the selected decision-making model to the analyzed situation. The first step is identifying the specific question that should be addressed. The selected question is the optimal nurse’s strategy under the conditions of improper behavior from the side of other healthcare experts. As some misbehavior and improper actions made by other professionals is possible, it is reasonable to specify the optimal response strategy under such conditions. The next step is identifying the issue under examination. It refers to introducing interventions without receiving the proper informed consent from the patient in a situation when it is explicitly required.