Personal & Societal Values in Nursing

When dealing with ethical choices, it is really crucial that nurses keep a nonjudgmental view. Each nurse enters the career with their own set of personal values and beliefs.

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These might not coincide with the worths and beliefs of clients and their households. Nurses should understand the values that clients and households have in order to reach ethical decisions.

Values are a discovered quality throughout each person's life. Early on, influences happened from family. Over time, one will have experiences and influences caused by society.

Worths come about from cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. These are what affect our relationships with other individuals.

Nurses need to be aware of their personal values. They must be aware of how they perceive life, health, illness, and death (Blais, 2011). This becomes increasingly important during end-of-life care and planning. Nurses need to maintain a biased attitude in order to have an effective working relationship with patients and their families. There will always be encounters with patients who hold different values and beliefs.

When it comes to making ethical decisions, nurses need to have reasonable thinking ability. Emotions and institutional policies should not be the basis of thought. A good decision is one that is made in the best interest of the patient and family. The patient’s well-being is most important.

The autonomy of the patient is a factor also. The patient and family need to be allowed to be proactive in medical care decisions. Mutual respect must also be present.

Being involved in ethical committees and nursing ethics groups can help nurses become more aware of their own personal values.

Ethics committees help to balance reasonable treatment and guidance with the respect and dignity that comes as a right to all patients.