Exam 9: Ethical and Bioethical Issues in Nursing and Health Care

Ethics applied to nursing can best be defined as:

A nurse is caring for a client who just consented to an elective abortion. The nurse is unsure of his/her own values as they relate to this issue. The nurse must:

When assessing an ethical issue, the nurse must first:

A client is in extreme pain after he was involved in a motor vehicle accident, and morphine has been ordered every hour for pain. The nurse injects saline into the client's IV line and takes the morphine for herself. The nurse is violating which principle of ethics?

The nurse who admits making a medication error and immediately files an incident report is demonstrating:

During a seminar on ethics, the educator realizes that more information is needed when a participant describes which situation as a violation of the ethical principle of autonomy?

Practicing nurses participate in employer-sponsored professional development classes that provide case studies related to ethical situations and decision making. Ethical considerations are debated among teams, and an expert helps the class arrive at the "best practices." The nurses are experiencing ethics ______________.

A nurse is assigned to a unit where 95% of all patients required total care. Most days the assistive personnel are able to complete their assignments and provide high-quality care. A patient returning from a procedure was somehow "skipped" when daily baths were performed and requests that her care now be provided. The nurse discovers the bed is rumpled and damp. The RN joins with some other staff to bathe the patient, change the bed, and help make the patient comfortable. These staff members are demonstrating:

In attempting to decide which services should be offered to a community, the public health nurse decides to implement hypertension screening and treatment because most of the residents are hypertensive. This decision is based on the principle of:

When healthy, a patient had requested that all life-sustaining measures be implemented. Now the patient has Alzheimer's and had a deterioration in health that severely limits quality of life. The patient's only child is petitioning that the parent not be placed on life support again and be given only palliative care. The nurse assessing this ethical situation following the procedure would place the steps in what order? (Place in order of the Situation Assessment Procedure). Put a comma and space between each solve choice (for example: a, b, c, d).

The Health Care Reform Act provides insurance for all U.S. citizens and legal residents presenting far reaching ethical considerations related to diverse individual patient health care beliefs for those delivering nursing care. Nurses must consider their civil rights under the Rights of conscience and how new health care agendas such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) could affect their practice in situations that may conflict with their own belief system. Today's practicing nurse must:

Throughout their careers, nurses are in an ongoing state of acculturation, gaining experience from formal nursing school classes, clinical experiences, and the ethical issues they encounter in their clinical practice. The ideal outcomes of these ongoing experiences with cultural decision making include: (Select all that apply.)

A 13-year-old female is brought to the family planning clinic by her enraged father, who has just learned that she is pregnant. The pregnant client states, "I want to have this baby and give it up for adoption." However, the father is adamant that she will disgrace the family and demands that the health care providers tell his daughter that she has a physical condition that would prohibit her from carrying this baby to a viable stage. The nurse realizes that this is a conflict that involves the ethical principle of:

A researcher calculated the risk-to-benefit ratio and concluded that no harmful effects were associated with a survey of college sophomores. The researcher was applying the principles of:

A family requests that no additional heroic measures be instituted for their terminally ill mother who has advance directives in place. The nurse respects this decision in keeping with the principle of:

In which case does the nurse act as "whistle blower"?

Three illegal immigrants with no health insurance or money sustained life-threatening injuries during an automobile accident. Two of these individuals had head trauma and lacerated internal organs. The decision was made to provide extended care in the trauma center after emergency surgery was performed to save their lives. The third individual received only minor injuries, which were treated in the emergency department. The care of the two critical clients was based on the ethical principle of:

The physician who insists on providing treatment in spite of the client's wishes because he "knows best" is reflecting:

A client and her husband used in vitro fertilization to become pregnant. The unused sperm was frozen so the couple could have more children later. The husband is killed while in combat, and the client journals her choices and the possible ramifications. She comes to the fertility clinic after looking at the situation from many perspectives and after considering many alternatives. She asks that the sperm be destroyed because her husband's faith prohibited remarrying, and allowing another person to use the sperm would conflict with her late husband's beliefs. The nurse realizes that:

An older adult client is comatose and had one electroencephalogram that indicated no activity. The daughter is very distraught and notices her mother's hand moves when she is talking to her. The daughter asks the nurse, "Is mother responding to my voice?" The nurse, attempting to console the daughter, knows the movement was involuntary but states, "It does appear she did." The nurse is violating which principle of ethics?