Purpose of Assignment:
The purpose of this assignment is for students to explain how ethical and bioethical considerations impact professional nursing practice. After reading the required text and online resources, the students will synthesize and apply the information on how such factors guide their own professional nursing practice.
Assignment Instructions
Step 1 – Prepare to Write the Essay:
Read Chapter 12 of the textbook (7th edition or 8thedition) . (Hint: The chapter authors are Epstein and Maynard.)
Read selected online resources for this week.
Review the grading rubric below to see how the paper will be evaluated. Look at the distribution of the points for this assignment.
Review the case scenarios below that describe situations that you may have experienced in your nursing practice or could experience in future practice.
CASE SCENARIOS:
You observe a homeless person without any insurance being provided substandard care by the healthcare team (Maville & Huerta, 2008).
A client who is paralyzed is considering physician-assisted suicide and asks you for help in locating a physician (Maville & Huerta, 2008).
You are a nurse providing home care to a mother, and you suspect child abuse after observing the mother’s reaction to her child (Maville & Huerta, 2008).
After a consultation with the physician, your patient has a new diagnosis listed on her chart: “Peripheral neuropathy: Complication related to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).” The patient informs you that she does not want her significant other to know about her HIV status. When the patient’s significant other comes to visit, he asks you about the consultation with the physician.
In Arizona, an 18-year-old patient has come to you, with his mother, to review his immunization record before he enters college to make sure that he has all the necessary vaccines to protect him while in college. You see that he has not received the Gardasil vaccine. The mother tells you privately that she does not want her son to receive the vaccine.
A newborn that you cared for last evening is now in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The charge nurse asks that all nurses caring for the infant review their charting from the previous day and to add or change details to indicate that all unit protocols were followed. She asks you to be sure that your charting is consistent with all other nurses who cared for the newborn.
Your German-speaking patient is in a lot of pain, because she cannot urinate and has a full bladder. Her husband tells you that she has had a urinary catheter placed during a previous hospitalization and that she will agree to having one placed again.
Select a case scenario that you will refer to within your paper. Note that the case scenarios are vague purposely to allow you to think of all kinds of ethical and bioethical influences that may apply to your responses.
Please review the attached Ethics Essay Rubric.
Step 2 – Write the Essay:
The essay will have four paragraphs, more than two (2) full pages and not more than three (3) pages of text, and a list of references. Do not add a title page.
Write a short essay that describes a primary ethical principle:
respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, or justice (Epstein & Maynard, 2020, p. 217) AND
a numbered provision from the ANA’s (2015) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements that you could apply to your chosen case scenario.
Place your unbolded name in the left corner and the page number in the right corner within the top margin. Center the bolded title of the essay on the top line of the first page. Use Times New Roman, font size 12, for this essay. There will be no headings in this essay. Double-space the entire paper and references. Do NOT add any extra empty lines. Set all values to zeros in the Paragraph Set paragraph tabs to ½ inch in the Paragraph menu.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
one (1) paragraph that sets the stage for the paper by identifying the chosen scenarioAND explaining why nurses should be concerned about ethical principles.
Also introduce the chosen primary ethical principle and chosen numbered provision to be discussed in the essay.Quote and cite one of the four primary ethical principles (respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, or justice) from the textbook. (Epstein & Maynard, 2020, p. x). Quote and cite one numbered provision (i.e., Provision 1.1 Respect for Human Dignity) from the ANA’s (2015) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements. See examples on rubric. Use direct quote citations for both citations in this paragraph.
Do not cite and reference the source of the scenario in this essay. Do not give the number of the scenario.
Paragraph 2:
Name the same primary ethical principle(i.e., respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice) from your textbook chapter by Epstein and Maynard that you identified in the introduction.
Explain how you would use the same primaryethical principle to guide your nursing actions in the chosen case scenario.
Synthesize the professional readings with your own original thoughts and avoid lengthy quotations.
Paragraph 3:
Name the same numbered provision (i.e., Provision 1.1 Respect for Human Dignity) from the ANA’s (2015) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements that you identified in the introduction.
Explain how you used the same numberedprovision to guide your nursing actions in the chosen case scenario.
Synthesize the professional readings with your own original thoughts and avoid lengthy quotations.
Paragraph 4
Finish the body of your essay with a conclusion
A conclusion summarizes the key points of the essay. The conclusion should discuss the same primary ethical principle and the same numbered provision. The ethical principle and the numbered provision must be cited as a direct quote or paraphrase.
Do not add new information. Only recap information that you have discussed in the body of your essay.
The essay will have four paragraphs, more than two (2) full pages and not more than three (3) pages of text, and a list of references
Important Instructions
Cite all information gathered from sources.
The reference page should include all the references for the sources used in the paper
A minimum of two (2) sources are required for this essay. Use the chapter reference format for the Epstein and Maynard chapter and the book reference format for the ANA’s (2015) Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements. See examples on rubric.
Hints: Use the book reference format in APA handout. The American Nurses Association is the author. Use year of manuscript, 2015. Titles of full works are italicized and lowercase. When the author publishes the book, the publisher is omitted. Do not add the URL. Author, X. X. (year). Title of book (xth. ed.). Do NOT add the APA Manual reference.
Remember to cite paraphrases and direct quotations. Each paragraph should have a citation.
A paragraph should have at least three (3) sentences but should not be longer than approximately half of a double-spaced page.
