NURSING

Utilitarian and Deontological Theories in Nursing

Utilitarian and Deontological Theories in Nursing

Introduction

Nursing is an important field in healthcare as it is the process for caring for, or nurturing for an individual known as the 'patient'. It also refers to the functions and duties carried out by persons who have had formal education and training in the art and science of nursing. Being crucial in the healthcare field, certain functions and practices are being observed by nurses in order to more effectively and more efficiently provide services to their patients.

To further provide adequate service to their patients, nurses also have to observe moral and ethical principles and practices, as ethics and morals may serve to provide dilemmas and conflicts in rendering sufficient service to patients(Anscombe, et al., 2007 ). In addition, ethical principles and morals must be properly given importance and significance in the nursing practice to ensure that the well-being and health of the patients would be given priority, thus, upholding and promoting the moral aspect of the practice.

As such, this essay aims to choose whether a deontological or utilitarian perspective would be necessary for a particular case of truth telling of a nursing practitioner(Aristotle 2005). In this regard, both concepts would be briefly differentiated, to be able to make a choice, as being applicable to the case at hand. Afterwards, principles and alternative actions would be provided, with reference to the case in question. At the last part of the essay, a conclusion would be provided, which would emphasize the important decision made based on the discussion of the concepts.

Utilitarian vs. Deontological Concept

To be able to make a choice between what perspectives to use, both the utilitarian and the deontological perspective must be briefly defined and differentiated. It has been reported that the moral standard of utilitarianism is those actions are right that produce the greatest total amount of human well-being. This concept has a great intuitive appeal to many people because human well-being seems to be such a natural goal of human behavior (Foucault 2007 ). It has two underlying theories, namely, Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism.

Act utilitarianism theory promotes moral conduct that produces the greatest balance of good over evil, thus, a balance of good and evil is applied to every action. On the other hand, rule utilitarianism theory uses rules to assess the balance of good and evil, thus, there is conformity of actions to valuable rules. In addition, from the utilitarian perspective, what is considered ethical can be summarized in the basic tenet 'the greatest good for the greatest number'(Chang 2007 ).

On the other hand, from a deontological perspective, there is no need to justify duties by showing that they are productive of good; the philosophy focuses on universal statements of right and wrong. The principle is always to act so that everyone faced with the same situation, should take the same actions. The moral system of thinking is based on the view that particular types of action and/or behavior ...