Chapter 3: Managing Ethically
Description:
There are many areas in contemporary nursing that involve far-reaching ethical issues—such as informed consent, substitute decision-making, effective use of health-care resources, moral distress of staff, and conflict between staff and patient’s family members. This chapter examines some common ethical issues that nursing managers face, the notion of a moral community and ways to combat moral distress among staff.
Topics:
- Introduction
- The nature of ethical issues
- Ethical, practical, legal and administrative problems
- Moral uncertainty
- Moral distress
- Moral residue
- Moral integrity
- Critical thinking
- Coherence
- Commitment to act in a principled way
- Building moral communities
- Resource allocation
- Micro-allocation decisions
- Meso-allocation decisions
- Macro-allocation decisions
- Resources for nurse managers in ethical decision-making
- Principles for decision-making
- Professional associations
- Codes of ethics
- Past issues and cases
- Bioethicists and health-care ethics centres
- Religious and chaplaincy services
- Educational institutions and departments
- Core organisational values and policies
- The law
- Conclusion
- References
Speaker/ Author:
Laurie Hardingham
Laurie's qualifications include a post-basic certificate in ICU–emergency nursing from the University of Alberta, Canada; a bachelor of nursing from the University of Calgary, Canada; a master’s degree in philosophy and completion of course work towards a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Calgary. She has completed a fellowship in clinical ethics with the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics and a senior fellowship in clinical ethics with the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute/University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. She has been published in journals, is the author of textbooks and presented at conferences on bioethics, clinical ethics and nursing ethics both in Canada and internationally. Currently Laurie is the clinical ethicist at St. Joseph’s Health Care, London, Ontario and the assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario.
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