Ethical and Legal Responsibilities and the Role of the Nurse

Ethical and Legal Responsibilities and the Role of the Nurse

The nurse is responsible to uphold ethics. I took a class that was devoted completely to nursing and ethics because it is such an important topic. Nurses must up hold certain legal obligations. For example, if I witness abuse, I am legally and ethically obligated to report it. The hard thing about ethics is that sometimes it becomes a personal choice. Different people believe different ways on how they want to act. When I took my ethics class there were a lot of debates about what was "right" or "wrong." Ethical issues come up in health care because it deals with human lives.

Some nurses would argue that ethical and legal issues are one in the same. Others view them as separate issues. I see them at separate issues. There are certain things that I do because I am obligated to do them by law. If it was just up to my personal ethicial feelings, I may not do those things. For example, I feel really strongly about quality of life. If a patient codes and is not going to have what I think is a good quality of life, I would think not do resuscitate. But if they have not made an advanced directive about if they want to be resuscitated or not, I am legally obligated to resuscitate them.