Rights Of Nurses Research Articles

More RX Rights for Nurses

More RX Rights for Nurses

Ethical dilemmas and AIDS: nursing issues regarding rights and obligations.

Nurses and other health professionals deal with many ethical dilemmas daily. The AIDS epidemic has generated enormous controversy affecting the care and treatment of persons with HIV infections. As the epidemic spreads, the ethical issues become more apparent. The AIDS situation highlights the precarious balance between individual rights and the public welfare, patients' rights, and the rights of nurses and their professional obligations. Ethical questions have also been raised concerning equal rights to healthcare resources. The AIDS epidemic has caused hysteria among members of our society, including some people in the nursing profession. Implications for nursing practice and education are outlined to help nurses to make ethical rather than emotional decisions.

Ethics in Nursing

The primary focus of this text is theoretical. The introduction asks, "Why bother with ethics?" and considers the need to study ethics and historical codes of ethics. Subsequent chapters follow the life cycle with units on ethics and genetic birth control, abortion, neonatology, childhood, adults and the later years. Each chapter gives an historical overview of the subject, a summary of ethical issues, the nurse's role and case studies. Several chapters are selective in coverage, for example, the childhood chapter reviews children and research, child abuse and adolescent sexuality. The adult chapter considers distributive justice, scarce resources and sexual discrimination. The closing chapter, by Lucy Young Kelly, is on legal aspects of nursing, emphasising that the ethical and legal are not identical, but that they do overlap in their concerns. Kelly discusses patients' rights, informed consent, the right to die, confidentiality, assault and battery, the incompetent, the rights of nurses and so on.

The rights of nurses*

The rights of nurses are those of all individuals in society. This paper examines some of the fundamental issues underlying the 'rights of nurses' in the context of the declaration of a belief in the inalienable rights of all members of society.