Question

Write an abstract on one bioethical issue in Nursing.

Answer 1

Ethics are a set of morals and values on which the beliefs and behaviour of a person depends on. They govern the way in which a person carries himself and treat others. Bioethics is following the ethical practices and application of its principles in the health care. They deal with various issues and practices in the health care and question them using the set ethical principles. They areas of interest here are in gene manipulation, human experimentation, cloning, gene therapy, animal experimentation etc. They question the moral and ethical aspects of these practices. They also deal with even sensitive issues like abortion, contraception, removal of life support and euthanasia. This field also deals with the legal aspects of the health care with regard to ethics. It is based on main principles like giving respect to patient, benefiting the patient, not harming the patient and practices should be beneficial to everyone but not only to certain sect of people and the patient should have the right to choose what treatment option is best for him/ her.

One of the bioethical issues faced in the field of nursing that I would like to discuss here is euthanasia. It is also known as mercy killing in some countries. It means ending the life of an individual medically using drugs or removal of life support and providing a painless death . It has been a topic of debate and differences of opinions for some decades. It is practiced  in terminally ill and comatose patients in whom recovery chances are close to nil or the conditions in which the patients has to deal with life long suffering and pain. In these patients euthanasia is carried out by providing painless death in terms of mercy from the suffering. This topic becomes even more difficult to come to a conclusion when dealing with comatose patients. Patients with irreversible painful diseases can give their consent and opt for euthanasia. But the comatose and mentally altered patents cannot give concern. This raises a question if it is ethically and morally correct to remove the life support of the person without his/her consent. In some cases a healthy people whose partners are terminally ill have appealed for euthanasia as they don’t want to live without their partners. Cases like these make law question the concept of euthanasia in the first place. The world has not yet come to a single conclusion on this topic. There are few countries who agree with euthanasia and some countries seriously oppose it. Some philosophers agree with it considering that it should be an individual’s choice to opt for anything that makes a person happy and removes him from pain and suffering. While few others disagree saying that it is against the basic rule of life as life is a struggle and no one should be allowed to quit in the middle. These people also state that this legalisation of euthanasia could lead to increase in the incidence of people who opt for this when even small difficulty arises in life. This is one of the few topics on which it is almost impossible to come to a universal decision as every case is unique.

This is a brief discussion on the topic of bioethical issues in nursing. Hope this helps you out. Please feel free to give your feedback and if you want further elaborate discussion. Thank you and have a great day.