research paper on nursing dilemma situations. Needs to be 8 pages.

Need an research paper on nursing dilemma situations. Needs to be 8 pages. Please no plagiarism. In order to impart these duties in the most appropriate manner, nurses must not only possess sound knowledge of the subject, but they must also be aware of ethical laws and legislations and how to handle ethical dilemmas. This is because, through their career, nurses encounter many situations that are tangled in ethical complexities. As Hall (1992. cited in Silva and Ludwick, 1992) rightly put it “the ethics incorporated into good nursing practice are more important than knowledge of the law. practicing ethically saves the effort of trying to know all the laws.” Clinical ethics literature pertaining to the nursing profession identifies four important values and principles, namely, respect to the autonomy of the patient and to act with nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice (Nettina, 2006). Awareness of these principles helps in solving issues with ethical dilemmas. In this article, resolution of an ethical dilemma pertaining to an elderly cancer patient in palliative care will be elaborated based on ethical laws and the nursing code of ethics, in the context of the review of concerned literature.

53-year-old Mrs. Cheng is admitted to a palliative care ward with a history of bowel cancer and liver metastasis. The old lady is the last surviving member of her family and her expected lifespan is one month. Mrs. Cheng is a chain smoker and she sees no meaning in giving-up this enjoyable thing in the last phase of her life. She smokes about 25 cigarettes a day. Since she cannot smoke inside the hospital, she is taken outside the ward in a wheelchair and each time this consumes 12 minutes of the care-taking nurse time. Nurses taking care of Mrs. Cheng object to the fact that she needs to smoke because it is not only bad for health, but it also disrupts the care of other patients due to increased consumption of time on the part of the nurse. However, Mrs. Cheng wants to continue to smoke and this had led to a situation of an ethical dilemma. In this essay, a solution to this problem will be discussed with reference to rules and regulations that guide the practice of nursing.