Nursing care encompasses many critical responsibilities that impact patients’ lives every day. With decisions made in stressful, high-stakes situations and events, nurses must follow protocol, respect patients’ wishes and rights, and keep patients safe. Nurses must strive to be highly ethical to make the most appropriate decisions. This is especially true when patients’ lives are at stake.
In the United States, nurses are viewed as highly ethical and honest professionals, with 78% of US adults in 2023 rating nurses as “very high” or “high” when it comes to honesty and ethics. As healthcare workers who face professional ethical dilemmas almost daily, they need to be very familiar with the nursing code of ethics, a guide to help them with their ethical decision-making.
This article sheds light on the nursing code of ethics and why nurses need to abide by it.
What is the Code of Ethics for Nurses?
For over 70 years, the American Nurses Association (ANA)’s The Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretative Statements has been helping nurses take accountability and responsibility within their nursing practice. The principles outlined in The Code of Ethics are typically incorporated into healthcare institutions’ policies and procedures to promote patient well-being.
Outlined in the 64-page document are nine important provisions:
· Provision 1: The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person.
· Provision 2: The nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population.
· Provision 3: The nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient.
· Provision 4: The nurse has authority, accountability, and responsibility for nursing practice; makes decisions; and takes action consistent with the obligation to promote health and to provide optimal care.
· Provision 5: The nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity, maintain competence, and continue personal and professional growth.
· Provision 6: The nurse, through individual and collective effort, establishes, maintains, and improves the ethical environment of the work setting and conditions of employment that are conducive to safe, quality health care.
· Provision 7: The nurse, in all roles and settings, advances the profession through research and scholarly inquiry, professional standards development, and the generation of both nursing and health policy.
· Provision 8: The nurse collaborates with other health professionals and the public to promote human rights, promote health diplomacy, and reduce health disparities.
· Provision 9: The profession of nursing, collectively through its professional organizations, must articulate nursing values, maintain the integrity of the profession, and integrate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy.
These nine provisions support the four principles of ethics in nursing, which are as follows:
· Respect for autonomy. This refers to nurses’ respect for patients’ ability to make their own decisions. Nurses must understand that they should educate patients to make sound medical decisions, but they should not influence these decisions.
· Non-maleficence. This refers to not doing any patient harm. Nurses must ensure that patients are not exposed to negligent care and that health risks are always avoided.
· Beneficence. This refers to acting with compassion, kindness, and charity.
· Justice. This refers to treating patients impartially or fairly.
The importance of nursing ethics
Because patients come from various backgrounds and cultures, the nursing profession is riddled with unique challenges and considerations that must be deliberated with utmost care. To work with integrity and to provide optimal patient care, nurses need to have a solid ethical foundation, one that is based on the Code of Ethics for Nurses.
A strong understanding and application of nursing ethics allows nurses to keep patient information confidential, advocate for patients’ health (especially when difficult decisions need to be made), and remain accountable and responsible for their decisions.
