New student to the site needs help with a paper!

[tcdaniels]

Hello All. I am a senior nursing student (only 10 weeks left until graduation!)new to this site. I have to write a paper for school on an ethical issue in nursing and I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out a topic. Most of my clinical rotations have been great and I have not seen any "ethical issues" occur. Can anyone give me some ideas? I would appreciate it.

By the way...this is my very first time every posting on a web site! How exciting!

[nursinghumor]

Ethical issues come up all the time. What did your instructors cover when they were discussing the topic?

Do you give the terminal cancer patient morphine doses sufficient to control their pain, even if it may speed up their death?

Do you allow a hemorrhaging jehovas witness, to refuse life-saving blood transfusions even if it will result in them dying?

Do you report a fellow nurse you suspect of doing drugs on the job and endangering patient care, or allow them to continue because it is not "your" problem.

You could spend a month on any of the above three topics alone. You can find more examples here:
http://www.nursefriendly.com/ethics

And here:
http://www.nursingcasestudy.com

Hope that helps.

Andrew Lopez, RN
http://www.4nursing.com

[cassioo]

should women who present in labor with positive drug tests be able to keep the baby or does it go to foster care?

right to die

life support

late abortions

witholding any treatment to a child d/t the parents religious beliefs

patient dumping

on and on and on

[dchia1022]

There is an online journal filled with nursing issues. Go there and read some of the articles that strike your interest, then do the research on the topic that interests you most. Writing a paper will give you an insight to issues that plague our profession. http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/

[Debc]

How about the ER issue of a mentally unstable patient who clearly can not take care of himself is released onto the "streets: because the state emergency psychiatric care (mental health deputies) assess him as not being a danger to himself or others. Then the only alternative is to hold him for 10-24 hrs until a court order from the judge deems him to be mentally unstable and an involuntary order to commit is issued. Why can't our doctors make this decision (in some states they can) and free up our overcrowding ERs. These are the patients who walk off bridges and overpasses and walk into on-coming traffic. They are not mentally aware enough to be able to answer a mental health deputy's questions.