Spirituality and Ethical Issues in Nursing - Essay Example

"Spirituality and Ethical Issues in Nursing" is a great example of a paper on care. In Matthew chapter 8 verses 14 to 17, Jesus had gone to Peter’s house and saw that Peter’s mother-in-law was sick with a high fever. Jesus touched her hand and she was healed. The fever went away and she stood up and started to attend to their needs. He also healed more who were sick and drove away evil spirits from others. Here, the components of healing do not involve medical intervention despite the fact that there is a physical aspect. The healing here happens as a miracle and involves both faith and something physical. Peter and his mother-in-law believed that Jesus could perform miracles one of which would be the action of healing her. Indeed, this happens as Jesus looks at her and sees that she is suffering from a high fever. The only thing that Jesus does is that he touches her hand and the illness disappears showing healing (Matthew 8:14-17 King James Version).

Section 2

The nursing professional standards of practice address spiritual care, which is recognized as an important component of holistic care that nurses should provide for patients. The American Nurses Association Standards of Nursing Practice and the American Nurses’ Association Code of Ethics support spiritual care for Nurses. These institutions determine the conduct of the nursing profession and the standards of practice. Nurses are required to assess and meet the identified spiritual needs of the patients. Nurses are required to do so because they attend to patients in different settings and have extended contact with them than many other healthcare professionals. Therefore, they are the best to assess and provide for the patients’ spiritual needs in whatever setting they are in. This will ensure quality and holistic care for patients promoting healing (Carson & Koenig, 2004).

Section 3

An ethical dilemma refers to a situation where an individual questions how he or she should respond to an action or situation and the consequences that such a response would cause. There are several characteristics of an ethical dilemma and include justice, beneficence, autonomy, respect, and veracity for other persons and the person making that decision. All nurses must have these characteristics to ensure that they are ethical or they make ethical decisions. Nurses must prioritize the needs, safety, and compassion for patients before their own needs. An ethical dilemma could arise when a patient’s beliefs and values vary from those of the nurses or nurse’s place of work. The characteristics of ethical dilemma differ from other situations resulting in disagreement between conflicting preferences, needs, or expectations in the sense that an ethical dilemma involves ethical issues while the other situations do not but only involve needs, preferences of expectations (Casterlé, Dierckx, Izumi, Godfrey & Denhaerynck, 2008).

Section 4

An age-old tale of the father stealing a loaf of bread to feed his hungry family would be a dilemma between having to fulfill his parental responsibility and upholding the rule of law and the expectations of society. Stealing is wrong by society and is punishable by law yet, he steals to provide for his family, which is a responsibility. For the father, the implications of this are that he will feed his family but will face a jail term. For the family, they will feed but will be guilty of consuming stolen food. The community and the society will have to stand by the father for being responsible for feeding the family which will be morally justified or jails him for breaking the law. If the society and community stand by him when morally justified, this could encourage such acts in the future, if they jail him, they will avoid such situations but risk having chances of people die of hunger (Noel-Weiss, Cragg & Woodend, 2012).

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