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Leticia Gutierre
Based on your experience, describe current healthcare practices, procedures, and policies that warrant challenging to improve care utilizing critical ethical principles.
Based on my experience in healthcare, healthcare practices, regulations, and procedures require improvement. One procedure that needs improvement in healthcare is the consent-seeking procedure. Regarding informed consent, patient autonomy should be respected, and their decisions and wishes should be honored, even if the choice is to give their family’s wishes precedence over their own (Zhang et al., 2021). In current healthcare practice, patients must be given more information to make informed decisions, and their decision-making ability must be examined. To promote informed decision-making in healthcare, the principle of autonomy must be respected through proper assessment of the patient’s ability to make decisions, appropriate information delivery to the patient, and respecting patient desires.
Another healthcare issue that warrants improvement is the equitable allocation of healthcare resources. I have experienced unjust treatment during the allocation of resources, especially to vulnerable populations, leaving them strained and more vulnerable. In this case, the principle of justice is not respected. The procedures or policies used in distributing healthcare resources must be fair and transparent; they must also consider factors like population needs and benefits to the allocated population.
Another current healthcare practice that warrants improvement is care at the end of life. This phase of life leads to conflicting ethical principles on respecting patients’ autonomy in making decisions while simultaneously avoiding harm to the patient and ensuring the patient’s well-being is intact, thus ensuring non-maleficence and beneficence (Akdeniz et al., 2021). To ensure appropriate end-of-life care, there should be open communication between the patient and the family members involved to ensure smooth care during the final stage of life.
Recall areas in the clinical practice of EBP in which ethical wrongdoing was a potential or real-life issue and how effective EI could have had a positive impact.
I have experienced situations where there were potential ethical wrongdoings related to care in the end-of-life phase, obtaining proper consent, and moral distress among nursing staff. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to regulate your emotions while understanding the feelings of those around you (Dugué et al., 2021). Thinking back on these experiences through emotional intelligence can enhance my understanding. When taking care of patients in their end-of-life phase, there are many emotions involved, especially in grief, which includes denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance; these stages involve both the patient and the family (Patinadan et al., 2020). Emotional intelligence will enable me to be aware of my emotions before interacting with the patient and the family, thus helping me talk about crucial topics in this phase of life.
I have also encountered consent-seeking situations in which ethical wrongdoing was a potential issue; emotional intelligence was instrumental in understanding what the patient needs to give informed consent through learning of the patient’s signs of distress; this helped me to change the approach I will use in seeking informed consent, for example, by giving enough information to the patient. Another area is the case of moral distress among the nursing staff; emotional intelligence enabled me to be self-aware, identify signs of distress from my staff members, and apply coping mechanisms to maneuver the situation, thus preventing conflicts and more distress in the workplace.
Conclusion
Ethical principles like justice, autonomy, beneficence, and non-maleficence are essential in addressing current issues in healthcare practice. Having emotional intelligence enhanced my understanding and interaction with others. It also helped me efficiently provide quality nursing to patients and their families, thus improving health outcomes.
References
Akdeniz, M., Yardımcı, B., & Kavukcu, E. (2021). Ethical considerations in end-of-life care. SAGE Open Medicine, 9(9). https://doi.org/10.1177/20503121211000918
Dugué, M., Sirost, O., & Dosseville, F. (2021). A Literature Review of Emotional Intelligence and Nursing Education. Nurse Education in Practice, 54(1), 103–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2021.103124
Patinadan, P. V., Tan-Ho, G., Choo, P. Y., & Ho, A. H. Y. (2020). Resolving anticipatory grief and enhancing dignity at the end of life: A systematic review of palliative interventions. Death Studies, 46(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2020.1728426
Zhang, H., Zhang, H., Zhang, Z., & Wang, Y. (2021). Patient privacy and autonomy: a comparative analysis of cases of ethical dilemmas in China and the United States. BMC Medical Ethics, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00579-6
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