NUFT 202 Exam 3 with Answers
1. Ethics the study of conduct and character. It is concerned with
determining what is good or valuable for individuals,
groups, and society at large.
Acts that are ethical reflect a commitment to standards
that individuals, professions, and societies strive to meet.
When decisions must be made about health care, un-
derstandable disagreement can occur among health care
providers, families, patients, friends, and people in the
community. The right thing to do can be hard to determine
when ethics, values, and perceptions about health care
collide.
2. Autonomy Commitment to include patients in decisions; refers to
the commitment to include patients in decisions about all
aspects of care as a way of acknowledging and protecting
a patient's independence. Involving patients in decisions
about their care is now standard practice. Providers are
obligated to inform patients about risks and benefits of
treatment plans and then to ensure that they understand
and agree with their plan.
Respect for provider autonomy refers to provider relation-
ships to institutions.
3. Beneficence Taking positive actions to help others; fundamental to the
practice of nursing and medicine. The agreement to act
with beneficence implies that the best interests of the
patient remain more important than self-interest.
4. Nonmaleficence Avoidance of harm or hurt; Maleficence refers to harm
or hurt; thus nonmaleficence is the avoidance of harm or
hurt. In health care, ethical practice involves not only the
will to do good, but an equal commitment to do no harm.
5. Justice Being fair; refers to fairness. It is used most often in
discussions about access to health care resources, in-
cluding the just distribution of resources. The term just
culture refers to the promotion of open discussion without
fear of recrimination whenever mistakes, especially those
involving adverse events, occur or nearly occur.
, NUFT 202 Exam 3 with Answers
6. Fidelity Agreement to keep promises; also refers to the unwill-
ingness to abandon patients regardless of the circum-
stances, even when personal beliefs differ as they may
when dealing with drug dealers, members of the gay com-
munity, women who received an abortion, or prisoners.
7. Code of nursing - A set of guiding principles that all members of a profes-
ethics sion accept
- Helps professional groups settle questions about prac-
tice or behavior
- Includes advocacy, responsibility, accountability, and
confidentiality
8. Social network- presents ethical challenges for nurses; can be a sup-
ing portive source of information about patient care or pro-
fessional nursing activities. The risk to patient privacy is
great. Posting a photo with no identifiers should not be
practiced, as sometimes, the patient can still be identified.
Becoming friends with patients may cloud your ability
to remain objective. Workplace policies will guide your
decisions in engaging with social media.
9. ANA code of The American Nurses Association (ANA) code of ethics
ethics provides a foundation for professional nursing.
A code of ethics can be defined as a collective statement
about the group's expectations and standards of behav-
ior.
The ANA established the first code of nursing ethics
decades ago.
The ANA reviews and revises the code regularly to re-
flect changes in practice. However, basic principles of re-
sponsibility, accountability, advocacy, and confidentiality
remain constant.
10. Advocacy refers to the support of a particular cause. As a nurse
you advocate for the health, safety, and rights of patients,
including their right to privacy and their right to refuse
treatment.
,11. Responsibility refers to willingness to respect obligations and to follow
through on promises.
12. Accountability refers to the ability to answer for one's own actions. Stan-
dards are set by The Joint Commission and the ANA.
Health care facilities have compliance officers who are
responsible for making sure that the institution remains in
compliance with standards and regulations.
13. confidentiality The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
of 1996 (HIPAA) mandates protection of the patient's
personal health information.
14. Your patient is Answer: D
about to un- Rationale: Sometimes to improve a patient's condition, it
dergo a con- is necessary to perform a procedure that will cause pain
troversial ortho- for the patient. The nurse must weigh the benefits and the
pedic procedure. risks with the patient in his or her quest to do no harm.
The procedure
may cause pe-
riods of pain.
Although nurs-
es agree to do
no harm, this
procedure may
be the patient's
only treatment
choice. This ex-
ample describes
the ethical princi-
ple of:
A. autonomy.
B. fidelity.
C. justice.
D. nonmalefi-
cence.
15. Value A value is a personal belief about the worth of a given
idea, attitude, custom, or object that sets standards that
influence behavior.
, 16. Values clarifica- Ethical dilemmas almost always occur in the presence of
tion conflicting values.
To resolve ethical dilemmas, one needs to distinguish
among values, facts, and opinion.
you learn to tolerate differences in a way that often (al-
though not always) becomes the key to the resolution of
ethical dilemmas.
17. Deontology proposes a system of ethics that is perhaps most familiar
to health care practitioners. Deontology defines actions
as right or wrong based on their "right-making charac-
teristics," such as fidelity to promises, truthfulness, and
justice. Deontology depends on a mutual understanding
of justice, autonomy, and goodness. But it still leaves room
for confusion to surface.
18. Utilitarianism Proposes that the value of something is determined by
its usefulness. This philosophy is also known as conse-
quentialism because its main emphasis is on the outcome
or consequence of an action. A third term associated
with this philosophy is teleology, from the Greek word
telos, meaning "end," or the study of ends or final causes.
The greatest good for the greatest number of people is
the guiding principle for determining right action in this
system.
19. Feminist Ethics Focuses on the inequality between people; Feminist
ethics critiques conventional ethics such as deontology
and utilitarianism. It looks to the nature of relationships to
guide participants in making difficult decisions, especially
relationships in which power is unequal, or in which a
point of view has become ignored or invisible. Writers
with a feminist perspective tend to concentrate more on
practical solutions than on theory. Feminist ethicists pro-
pose that the natural human urge to be influenced by
relationships is a positive value.
20. Ethics of Care Emphasizes the importance of understanding relation-
ships, especially as they are revealed in personal narra-
