a.What primary relationships do you see between legal and ethical issues? b.How do your values affect your beliefs of what is ethical or unethical? c.What is the relationship when personal values and professional ethics conflict?
A.Legal and ethical issues can intertwine depending on the individual and if they clash can cause the person distress. Ethical issues vary from person to person. These issues are based on what the individual believes are right or wrong. Legal ethics are the same across the board though they can change. Legal ethics are set up to guide an individual in making appropriate decisions.
B.Values are an accumulation of past experiences that form ideals or beliefs that guide a person’s decision making process. “Values are personal beliefs about the truths and worth of thoughts, objects, or behavior.” (Guido, 2010, p. 3) An individual’s family are usually a huge contributor and help set and define the foundations of a person’s values which can affect what they believe is ethical or unethical.
C.When personal values and professional ethics conflict, an individual can be faced with a dilemma. This dilemma can lead to a moral distress. “Moral distress is a painful state of imbalance seen when nurses make a moral decision, but are unable to implement the decision because of real or perceived institutional constraints.” (Guido, 2010, p. 20) I took care of a patient that was on life support and the family wanted to remove the ventilator. Before I became a nurse I had never put a lot of thought into this but as I heard the family’s wishes I felt something deep inside me twist painfully. I knew that the family’s wishes had to be followed but I felt that is was wrong at the time. Later I did some self-reflection on my own beliefs and understood that if my wife or children were in the patient’s position I would not want to give up.
The Essay on “Ethical Egoism versus Virtue Ethics”
Theories concern ideas of how things are or how things ought to be. Ethical theories are concerned with what morally ought to be the case. There are three types of general ethical theories: Consequentialism, Deontology, and Human Nature Ethics. Consequentialism is mainly concerned with bringing about proper ends of acting. Its descriptive claim is that every action seeks a particular end. ...
