Question

A. What do you think of the conflicts that arise in the myriad of relationships that nurses have to doctors, fellow nurses, administrators, recipients of care and the families of the recipients of their care? How are nurses to handle the conflicts?
B. A simple case: A family wants to know the condition of a 55 year old women who has been undergoing a procedure in the hospital. They crowd into her room and in the doorway and as the nurse enters and leaves family members ask many questions. The nurse is aware that the doctor accurately reported the diagnosis and prognosis to the care recipient but has misinformed the family.

What is the morally correct thing for the nurse to do and what is the ethical principle that makes that the morally correct thing?

Answer 1

Nurse’s role in the myriad of relationship with fellow nurses, doctors, administrators, recipients of care and the families of the recipient of their care is like a multifaceted and versatile in nature.

There are many types of conflicts

a. Conflicts between nurse and organisation: These types of conflicts are managed by collective bargaining. It is a type of bargaining where the nurse should bargain from a position of strength without exploiting the weakness. In this type of conflict management senior leadership team plays a vital role.

b. Inter group conflict: This type of conflict may arise between same groups of the different group. This conflict resolution involves strategic planning with proper reporting of the incidents / grievance redressal system and umbrella group of resolution method where a committee recommends the directives to the conflict involved nurse

c. Facility, training, workplace conflict: These kind of conflicts are majority solved by skills and organisational heads. Workplace inequality, gender discrimination, and dissent handling are all criminal offences under penal of codes. Hence any decision involving these shall be handled by the top committees, welfare boards, grievance cells, tribunals etc…

I. A simple case: A family wants to know the condition of a 55 year old woman who has been undergoing a procedure in the hospital. They crowd into her room and in the doorway and as the nurse enters and leaves family members ask many questions. The nurse is aware that the doctor accurately reported the diagnosis and prognosis to the care recipient but has misinformed the family.

What is the morally correct thing for the nurse to do and what is the ethical principle that makes that the morally correct thing?

Answer

In the current scenario the nurse has to observe

1. Crowd of people

2. The crowd of people entering the room of the patient

3. Nurse is asked many questions

4. The doctor had accurately reported the diagnosis and prognosis to care recipient

Keeping in mind all the above details the nurse’s priority shall be

a. Restrict the visitors as the care recipient has undergone procedure and needs strict asepsis environment to avoid infection

b. Take help of security and councillors to manage the crowd

c. Reassure the crowd by updating the patient’s condition

d. According to principle of autonomy the first informant is either the patient or the closes relative like wife, husband, son, daughter etc… the relatives who have come to visit shall not fall under principal of autonomy and hence information to them is optional

e. In the present case the first informant is patient him/herself and Hence, its imperative that the nurse just clarifies the doubt of the undersigned relative about the patient’s condition and keep the confidentiality of the patient intact