What would Nightingale say in regards to the ethical dilemmas facing nurses?

Today’s nurses face many complex issues of their each day practice. On the one centesimal anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s death, Nurse.com asked renowned Nightingale scholars to predict what the founder of recent nursing would have product of all of it.

What insights does Florence Nightingale bring to today’s ethical dilemmas?

Florence Nightingale is a task model for us when faced with ethical dilemmas. She saw “ethical knowledge” as appreciating and explaining situations with a view to create formal behaviors, expressions, and dimensions of morality and ethics that intersect with duties; today these could be considered legally defined duties. Ethical knowledge included on a regular basis decisions about right and unsuitable; what to do in practice, in personal behavior and conduct; priorities; responsibilities; and advocacy on behalf of the patient, the nurse, the hospital, the clinic, the environment, and society.

Nightingale identified ethical conflicts wherein hospital systems didn’t allow nurses to do what they believed was right, particularly in identifying unsafe practices or acting as patient advocates. She taught that the moral ideal of the nurse was realized when her whole self was brought into relationship with the entire person receiving care. It was the nurse who must protect the vulnerable patient and must maintain the humanity and dignity of the person.

During her lifetime, Nightingale was often frustrated by the abuse of nurses and nurse superintendents by physicians and hospital administrators; she sought to resolve these unethical situations. For example, hospitals used nurses as essentially free labor, demanding unreasonable hours and duties beyond patient care. Her work brought with it a national and international perspective on the moral issues faced by nurses. These issues live on within the nursing occupation today.

Nightingale’s letters to nurses provide guidance on methods to develop personal ethics. She encouraged nurses to explore personal principles of conduct within the classroom, within the hospital, and of their leisure time. She emphasized ethical decision-making in each the skilled and private spheres: what is correct and unsuitable have to be recognized as intrinsic values, and every nurse is accountable for her own moral conduct, since there is no such thing as a recipe for it. Each nurse should show ethical knowledge as an expression of motion that might be demonstrated, examined, and evaluated. Through reflection and learning in regards to the meaning and purpose of labor, nurses can gain insight into the very best level of ethical selections and possibilities.

Nightingale encouraged her nurses to uphold an ethic of care and healing that sought to preserve wholeness, and this applied to end-of-life care and all features of dying. She encouraged nurses to be role models and maintain their dignity. She also taught them methods to behave towards colleagues and the patient receiving care, and to think about the needs of the family.

Nightingale considered self-care as a part of the ethics of care. She asked nurses to concentrate on strategies that might maintain their health. She was aware of cultural diversity and viewed everybody as a complete body, mind, and spirit. She emphasized that everybody should have the option to receive care regardless of sophistication, religion, or ability to pay for services. She insisted on making a care plan that was consistent with cultural background, beliefs, and health values.

Nightingale could be pleased today with the ways wherein nurses are engaging in hospice look after the terminally ailing and creating healing environments in hospitals, in addition to strategies for closing personal matters reminiscent of medical directives, living wills, and sturdy powers of attorney. She would ask us to introduce more healing rituals for dying and to remind us that patients shouldn’t be left to their very own devices unless that’s their alternative.