ETHICAL DILEMMA

Contemporary Ethical Dilemma in Nursing

Contemporary Ethical Dilemma in Nursing

“Society's faith in doctors as healers would become subverted.”

Patient losses the trust of a doctor, because they see the doctor has actively helped someone in his death. One maxim of medical care is “Cure sometimes, Relieve often, comfort always”. There are several times when the physician is not able to cure the disease or relieve the symptoms. On the other hand, how would a patient feel when he knew that the doctor gave up on another patient particularly in case they were terminally ill and let the suicidal death take place. The relationship between a physician and a patient is the basis of all the interactions. If the patient gets helped in death, it will make the majority of patient uncomfortable. There is one more maxim of doctors, and that is first doing no harm to the patient. This raise an argument that doctor-assisted suicide disturbs the healing purpose of the medicines.

Reasons for a struggle in addressing end-of-life issues

Addressing end-of-life issues is difficult for physicians to initiate. The clinicians, patient's families and patients themselves plan to avert pointing out matter of death even when the person is a patient of severe disease, and the prognosis is not good. This discussion is difficult to initiate because of its psychological consequences. Patient may suffer from anxiety, mood disorders, clinical depressions and personality disorders. The discussion of End-of-life issues needs some more struggle due to cultural differences like, in many culture, these issues are considered un ethical and banned (Werth et al. 2002).

The controversy in patient's right and the caregiver's right to privacy and confidentiality

Although transmission of HIV from an infected physician to his/her patient during invasive surgery is unlikely, it is a theoretical possibility and thus foreseeable. For the reason of the potentially deadly consequence of such transmission, infected physicians should not engage in activities that create the risk of such transmission.

The guidelines of confidentiality drawn by centres for disease Control and prevention ask health care workers to undergo test voluntarily to find out whether they are infected. The guidelines also recommend that the patient should be informed of it. Here, the dilemma is how to balance these rights against the rights of public in general to be protected from a deadly disease.

State laws have been developed that protect the confidentiality of HIV-related information. Some states have developed informational brochures and consent, release, ...