In: Nursing
The principle of beneficence requires the health care provider to: prevent or remove harm and do good promote harm or evil and do good ask the patient to sign a survey indicating the health care provider has been beneficial to his or her care avoid harm as a consequence of doing good
The principle of beneficence: It refers to the duty of healthcare professionals to provide good and to ensure maximum benefit to the public, while minimizing the possible harm. It concerns the duty of one individual to benefit the other. The goals of all healthcare professionals including the APNs are inherently for the patient’s beneficence or broadly, for the public health. So, beneficence governs all actions of APNs while engaging in professional activities (Shahriari et al., 2013). In general, nurses care for the long-term outcomes of the patients. As beneficence refers to maximizing good for the patient, a dilemma often occurs in defining what is actually good to the patient and what does a good care or approach means to the patient (Grace, 2017).
For example, some patients may think that allowing them to die is good for them, while to a healthcare professional, prompting a patient through a difficult therapeutic intervention can do good and ensure prolong and better life. Another example is, some of the public health interventions are carried out for the benefit of the public (beneficence) which is an issue in case of compulsory vaccination. So, nurses have to consider the patient’s preferences and requirements for their better life before applying beneficence in practice.
References:
Grace, P. J. (2017). Nursing ethics and professional responsibility in advanced practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Shahriari, M., Mohammadi, E., Abbaszadeh, A., & Bahrami, M. (2013). Nursing ethical values and definitions: A literature review. Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 18(1), 1–8.