Ethics in nursing is a branch of applied ethics that concerns itself with activities in the field of nursing. When nurses make professional judgments, their decisions are based on a reflection of consequences and on universal moral principles. …show more content…
The nature of nursing means that nursing ethics tends to examine the ethics of caring rather than 'curing' by exploring the everyday interaction between the nurse and the person in care. Early work to define ethics in nursing focused more on the virtues that would make a good nurse, which historically included loyalty to the physician, rather than the focus being on nurse's conduct in relation to the person in the nurse's care. However, recently, the ethics of nursing has also shifted more towards the nurse's obligation to respect the human rights of the patient and this is reflected in a number of professional codes for nurses. Ethics pertain to the “rightness” and “wrongness” of human actions, motives, and conduct. Complicated ethical issues in areas such as justice, privacy, and autonomy, tend to follow both the field of genetics and the field of nursing. Ethical problems and dilemmas arise daily in healthcare settings for both the patient and health care provider. For example, all …show more content…
Watson describes nursing as a human science with the major focus being the process of human care for individuals, families, and groups. The goal of nursing with Watson’s theory is centered on helping the patient gain a higher degree of harmony within the mind, body and soul. It is achieved through caring transactions. Virginia Henderson (1966) conceptualized the nurse's role as assisting sick or healthy individuals to gain independence in meeting fundamental needs. Nursing practice is the protection, promotion and optimization of health and abilities, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response and advocacy in care of individuals, family, communities and population. Nursing practice encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups and communities, sick or well and in all settings. Nursing practice includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled and dying people. Advocacy, promotion of a safe environment, research, participation in shaping health policy and in patient and health systems management, and education are also key nursing practice roles. It is also the use of clinical judgment in the provision of care to enable people to improve, maintain, or recover health, to cope with health problems,