A 55-yr-old man came into our ER with chest pain that had been persistent for three day

Respond to discussion

Include citations/Use in text citation where needed

All sources must be 5 years old or newer

Only needs to be about a paragraph long

More like a discussion rather than a paper

Please add to the discussion in your peer responses with informative responses, instead of posts similar to “great idea! I really agree with you.”

Each response needs to have a citation

POST 1(Melinda)

A 55-yr-old man came into our ER with chest pain that had been persistent for three day. He c/o chest pain/pressure, productive cough, runny nose, congestion, generalized fatigue/weakness. I was the triage nurse and after quickly talking with this patient, I took him back to the ER room. We started with an EKG, covid test and cardiac labs. The patient’s EKG had concerns for a STEMI and the cardiac team was immediately paged. The patient refused the covid vaccines and strongly did not want to get them. Patient ended up being covid positive and was admitted to the hospital after being taken to the Cath Lab. One of the RN’s I was working with made a comment that “he deserves to have covid and feel like crap since he doesn’t want to have the vaccines and we shouldn’t have to give care to patients like him”. I turned to this RN and explained how wrong he is to ever make that type of comment about a patient. I told him that every person needs to make the decisions for themselves regarding getting the covid vaccine, whether you agree with their decision or not. Just because this patient has chosen to not get the vaccine, does not me that he deserves to have anything happen to him.

The principle of nonmaleficence holds that there is an obligation not to inflict harm on others. By the nurse making comments about how the patient “deserves” to be sick is very inappropriate and falls under nonmaleficence. I spoke to the ER manager regarding the comments made by this RN. This RN was pulled into the office and spoke to about his comments and was told it is inappropriate. I have not heard this RN make these types of comments since, but I am not sure if the RN really understand how inappropriate his comments were.

Gaines, K. (2021). What is the nursing code of ethics? Nurse.org. https://nurse.org/education/nursing-code-of-ethics/

POST 2(Axia)

Ethical dilemmas are very common in the workplace, especially in healthcare settings. Oftentimes families request that the patient, their family member, not be told what their diagnosis is or what treatment they will need to go through due to their diagnosis. In my experience, this has happened to me a few times. This is known as honesty vs. withholding information, where family members may want to withhold medical information from sick patients to protect their emotions (Duquesne University School of Nursing, 2020). This is very conflicting for us nursing staff, as we owe it to the patient to provide full transparency in regard to their treatment and care. I once had a patient whose diagnosis had recently been discovered under our care. Unfortunately, they were within the late stages of liver disease. Their family asked that we not tell the patient of their diagnosis and allow them to be discharged so they can break the news to them at home. Although we understood they wanted their privacy and wanted to allow the patient to be told in a more comfortable environment, we could not withhold such important information from them. We also could not be sure enough to allow the patient to leave without knowledge of their condition and how to treat it, because it was not certain the family would even bring them back for treatment or even tell the patient. So, we fully disclosed all information to the patient and allowed them to make their own decisions moving forward regarding treatment.

Reference:

Duquesne University School of Nursing. (2020, June 5). Ethical issues in nursing: Explanations & solutions. Duquesne University School of Nursing. Retrieved February 6, 2022, from https://onlinenursing.duq.edu/blog/ethical-issues-in-nursing/