Good Jokes, Bad Jokes: The Ethics of Nurses’ Use of Humor

By Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, Michigan State University College of Nursing in East Lansing, associate editor of Nursing Ethics, and a contributing editor of AJN, where he regularly writes about ethical issues in nursing.

Humor has real benefits. But when does nurses’ joking about patients, each other, and the care they provide cross a line?

Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr. otisarchives4/Flickr

“Nurses make fun of their dying patients. That’s okay.” That was the provocative title of an op-ed by Alexandra Robbins in the Washington Post on April 16. The author’s treatment of the topic was more complex than the title suggested, but some examples of humor given in the article were troubling.

For ethical practice, nurses must consider if it is ever appropriate to discuss the clinical care of patients for humorous purposes. An easy answer would be—never. If patient care is never joked about, then no one’s feelings are ever hurt and nothing inappropriate is said as a joke. However, my experience as a nurse in psychiatric emergency and with human nature suggests two arguments against this approach:

  • Jokes will be made despite any prohibition.
  • Considerable good comes from such humor.

If jokes are going to be told anyway, it’s better to provide an ethical framework than to turn a blind eye. If joking about patient […]

2016-11-21T13:02:39-05:00April 29th, 2015|career, Ethics, healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|1 Comment
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A Nurse Ethicist’s Analysis of a Recent Nursing Home Sexual Consent Case

By Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, Michigan State University College of Nursing in East Lansing, associate editor of Nursing Ethics, and a contributing editor of AJN, where he regularly writes about ethical issues in nursing.

scales of justice/by waferboard, via Flickr scales of justice/by waferboard, via Flickr

An 78-year-old retired state legislator and farmer in Iowa is currently on trial for having sex with his wife, who has severe Alzheimer’s disease, in her shared room in a nursing home. He has been charged with rape.

The case highlights two ethical questions or conflicts:

  • When is protection needed and when is it intrusive and harmful?
  • What are the mental abilities required to consent to sex?

Consenting to sex is not the same as informed consent for treatment. In treatment, a clinician obtains consent to act on (treat) the patient in a way that will benefit the patient. By contrast, proper consent for sex is mutual and both parties benefit.

To extend the comparison: a patient’s decision to consent to treatment is generally made by balancing the benefits, harms, and risks to the individual patient. The decision to engage in sex often involves consideration of another’s satisfaction—it is not unknown for one spouse to agree to sex to please the other, even though he […]

2016-11-21T13:02:41-05:00April 21st, 2015|Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|4 Comments
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A Nursing Conference Focused on Quality and Safety, and a Big ‘What If?’

2015ANAQualityConferenceBanner600x100
By Maureen ‘Shawn’ Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

“What would quality in hospitals look like if health care institutions were as single-minded about serving clients as the Disney organization?”

Last week I attended the 2015 American Nurses Association Quality Conference in Orlando. The conference, which had its origins in the annual National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) conference, drew close to 1,000 attendees. Here’s a quick overview of hot topics and the keynote speech by the new Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, plus a note on an issue crucial to health care quality that I wish I’d heard more about during the conference.

Most sessions presented quality improvement (QI) projects and many were well done. There were some topics I hadn’t seen covered all that much, such as reducing the discomfort of needlesticks, enhancing postop bowel recovery, and promoting sleep. But projects aimed at preventing central line infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), and pressure ulcers ruled the sessions. These of course are among the hospital-associated conditions that might cause a hospital to be financially penalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The ANA also had a couple of sessions on preventing CAUTIs by means of a tool it developed in the Partnership for Patients initiative of the CMS to reduce health care–associated infections.

The keynote by Robert McDonald, the fairly new Secretary […]

2016-11-21T13:03:03-05:00February 9th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|2 Comments
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Cassandra’s Refusal of Chemo: Nurse Ethicist Ponders Ethics of Forcing Treatment

Douglas Olsen is an associate professor at the Michigan State University College of Nursing in East Lansing and a contributing editor of AJN, where he regularly writes about ethical issues in nursing.

scalesThe case of Cassandra, a 17-year-old female in Connecticut being compelled by the court to undergo chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, has aroused interest in the media and among bioethicists, who have offered mixed conclusions. (Here’s a recent update on Cassandra’s legal status.) For example, Ruth Macklin concludes that the actions taken to force the treatment were not justified, while Arthur Caplan concludes that compelling her to have the chemo is justified. Both are scholars of the highest order.

I agree with Caplan that she should be given the chemotherapy, but my purpose here is to illustrate that perspective plays an often unacknowledged role in ethical analysis. When feelings and personal perspective go unacknowledged, the analysis loses credibility and depth.

The principles in conflict in this the case are straightforward for ethicists: respect for autonomy versus beneficence.

As a society, we value control over personal choice, that is, autonomy, which would mean honoring Cassandra’s decision to forgo the chemo. The chief justification for overriding a patient’s autonomy is that the patient lacks decision-making capacity because she is a minor.

However, we also value doing what is […]

2016-11-21T13:03:09-05:00January 21st, 2015|Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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‘Tables Turned’: When the Patient’s Family Member Is a Nurse

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor

Illustration by Eric Collins. All rights reserved. Illustration by Eric Collins. All rights reserved.

Nurses are not always comfortable when a patient’s family member is also a nurse. In AJN’s January Reflections essay, “The Tables Turned,” a critical care nurse describes her attempt to navigate the role change from nurse to family member when her sister is hospitalized with multiple injuries after a bike accident.

Her sister is in obvious pain, but pain management is complicated by a low blood pressure. The author asks her sister’s nurse about alternative analgesics. She writes:

“The nurse, perhaps caught off guard by my question, answered abruptly: ‘I don’t think so. We don’t do that here.’ There was a pause. ‘Don’t do what?’ I asked. ‘We don’t do IV Tylenol,’ she repeated. She did not offer an explanation, an alternative, or say she’d ask another provider… I felt helpless, both as a critical care nurse and as a sister.”

As if to reinforce that the patient’s sister is not welcome to participate in care discussions, the charge nurse soon comes by and suggests that the author “step out to get some rest.”

Of course we don’t know the nurse’s […]

2016-11-21T13:03:16-05:00January 7th, 2015|career, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, pain management, Patients|5 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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