Abstract
Context: Nurses are often hesitant to talk about ethical issues in their practice for many unique and valid reasons. What if the burden of risk was lifted upon retirement, even if just slightly? The purpose of this study was to explore retired nurses’ reflections on their experiences of ethical issues and decision making in various nursing practice settings throughout their careers and to glean recommendations for ethics in contemporary nursing practice. Methods: Data were collected via in-depth, individual, semi-structured interviews. Guided by an interpretive, descriptive approach, data were managed with NVivo v.11 and analyzed with an inductive, comparative, thematic approach. In northern Ontario, two nurse researchers co-interviewed eight retired nurses with decades of practice experience across diverse Canadian health care settings. Ethics approval was obtained through Lakehead University’s Research Ethics Board. Findings: Three themes emerged to address ethical issues in practice; these are creativity, resourcefulness, and a strong sense of community with other nurses. Further, the retired nurses’ collated reflections on ethics in practice are presented as the FIG model: Fellowship, Ingenuity, and Gumption. Conclusions: This study identifies ethical underpinnings that retired nurses have used to effectively respond to ethical issues in their practice. Those who are currently nursing, and nursing as a profession, may wish to recognize and retain these strategies in order to continue to deliver a high standard of quality, ethical care. Recommendations for practice, research, and education are offered.
Highlights
Designated as International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, 2020 coincided with the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday [1]
In 1953, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) [2] produced the first international code of ethics for nurses to ensure that nursing care was grounded in ethical principles to meet patients’ needs and right to respect, dignity, quality of life, and safety [3]
Like many other countries who were members of the ICN, Canada adopted the international code of ethics for its nurses until it developed its own code in 1980 [4]
Summary
Designated as International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, 2020 coincided with the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday [1]. In Nightingale’s time, the nurse’s duty was to the patient first, with formal ethical decision-making in the exclusive domain of physicians It was not until the 1950s that the role of the nurse and the scope of nursing practice changed significantly. The latest update on the Canadian Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses was introduced in 2017 by the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) and represents the sixth revision of the original Canadian document [4]. Professional organizations such as the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) [5] and licensing bodies
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