Ethics Week

From this unit, I expected to learn what an ethics committee is and how they operate.  I also wanted to learn about who is involved in an ethics committee and how ethics plays a role in my nursing career and how I should operate in and around ethical issues.

I am not sure that I had ever really known anything about an ethics committee, and so I learned that there is a lot more to an ethics committee than I would have previously thought. I learned that an ethics committee can have guests sit on the board as needed to help in a given situation.  An ethics committee is made up of social workers, physicians, nurses, clergy, a lay person, and lawyers. It can be very difficult to try and have an unbiased opinion and look at the entire story before coming to any conclusions.

From the discussion that we had this week, I feel that a lot my team members thought the same way as me with the ethical decision on whether to stop dialysis for a vegetative state individual. We seemed to agree that it is important to gather all our information before we make a decision as an ethics committee and to hear all the different viewpoints. From the discussions, it is evident that we all come from different perspectives and backgrounds and that there can always be good & bad choices and consequences on both sides of the situation. It is difficult to come up with a final determination when you want what is best for both sides.

One of the biggest things that I have taken from this week is that I have resources available to me.  I will come across a number of ethical issues and decisions that will involve a patient of mine or me, and I need to make sure I know where to turn for information and support.  It is good to know that I have an ethics committee that can be utilized if the situation requires it.

Overall, I feel that ethical situations are all around us, and possibly even more than normal in nursing.  Because I currently work with older adults and death is probably closer to that population than any other, especially in the older adult population that is in the hospital with illness there are even more ethical situations that can arise.  I enjoyed the discussions that we had and the thoughts and feelings that it helped me to have hopefully before I would ever need to have them in a real life situation.