A Nurse Takes a Stand—and Gets Arrested

image via Wikimedia Commons / Jacklee

Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, College of Nursing, Michigan State University, writes about ethical issues for AJN.

On July 26, Alex Wubbels, charge nurse at the University of Utah Hospital burn unit in Salt Lake City, showed extraordinary ethical courage that will serve as an example for my students for a long time to come. She refused a police detective access to an unconscious patient so he could draw a blood sample, citing clear violation of hospital regulations, which require patient consent, a court warrant, or that the patient is under arrest. After a short, tense discussion, she was roughly handcuffed and put in a police vehicle by the detective. I recommend watching the video of the incident, although parts of it are quite disturbing. According to various analyses reported in the media, the hospital and Wubbels were legally correct and the detective’s view of her legal obligations was wrong.

All treatment, even the most minimally invasive, can be refused by a patient and therefore requires the patient’s informed consent. There are limited exceptions under which treatment can be provided without patient consent. These include:

2017-09-02T09:55:06-04:00September 2nd, 2017|Ethics, Nursing|11 Comments
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Managing Your Patients’ Pain: It’s Not Just about the Opioids

Before Pain Assessment Was the Norm

Some of the most difficult times I experienced as a nurse involved patients in pain. This was before the days of patient-controlled analgesia, when patients in acute pain were mostly managed with “Demerol IM q4h.”

I recall many incidents of paging and telephoning and beeping physicians and residents to get orders for pain medications and trying whatever non-pharma methods I could think of to allay pain. It was awful to see patients suffer needlessly.

Progress, But with a Cost

Then pain became a key part of assessment, as well as of patient satisfaction scoring, and clinicians heeded the need for managing pain. However, there has been too much reliance on the quick fix of strong opioids. A friend who recently had surgery was asked by a nurse to rate his pain. When he replied “eight,” she asked him if he wanted one or two oxycodone pills. His reply, “Well, what do people usually take?”

Revising the Approach to Pain Management

Thankfully, pain management is being revisited, and along with a renewed focus on not prescribing by the numbers (a patient’s pain rating should only be one factor in deciding the intervention), there is a greater understanding of pain and how it can become chronic, and there are more modalities at our disposal to manage it.

To […]

2017-04-05T10:34:01-04:00April 5th, 2017|Nursing, pain management|0 Comments
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Defending Against Moral Distress

A collaborative initiative offers recommendations to build moral resilience.

All nurses have at some point been faced with situations that challenge their values. Whether dealing with families or patients or the actions of colleagues, we may be faced with acting (or not acting) in accordance with our professional or personal values. I can easily recall several situations (which I detail in my February editorial) that involved unnecessary invasive procedures and surgery or removing life support.

Such situations take a toll on the individual and the care team and ultimately have a negative effect on patient care quality. Moral distress is not something that can be entirely eliminated—there will always be situations that provoke angst. But individuals can build moral resilience if they learn to recognize it when it occurs and if their organizations support them in finding ways to manage ethically challenging situations. […]

2017-02-06T09:15:27-05:00February 3rd, 2017|Ethics, Nursing|0 Comments
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Stop the Eye Rolling: Welcoming Future Nurses to the Profession

Rosemary Taylor

One perennial topic that comes up among nurses on social media is the extent to which many nurses have been treated unkindly by colleagues at some points in their careers. New nurses and nursing students are, for obvious reasons, particularly vulnerable to rudeness and other forms of unprofessional conduct. The Viewpoint in the January issue of AJN, “Stop the Eye Rolling: Supporting Nursing Students in Learning,” by Rosemary Taylor, PhD, RN, CNL, assistant professor of nursing at the University of New Hampshire, makes the case that nursing students often face an “unwelcoming introduction” to the profession when they venture out of the classroom for clinical instruction.

Writes Clark:

Nursing students are often targets of the kinds of incivility that can be classified as vertical violence. The majority of these incivilities are “low risk,” as described in Cynthia Clark’s “continuum of incivility,” with eye rolling (“low risk”) just below sarcasm on one end of the spectrum and threatening behaviors and physical assault (“high risk”) on the other.

Citing her own students’ sometimes disheartening experiences, as well as Cynthia Clark’s book Creating and Sustaining Civility in Nursing Education, Taylor makes a convincing argument that “eye rolling, a seemingly trivial gesture, is in fact a particularly hurtful form of nonverbal aggression.”

Yet, says Taylor, these and other […]

2017-01-05T08:25:57-05:00January 5th, 2017|Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing students|7 Comments
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Speaking Publicly ‘As a Nurse’: Case in Canada Highlights Risks, Responsibilities

Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, College of Nursing, Michigan State University, writes about ethical issues for AJN.

Recently, a disciplinary committee in Canada found a nurse in breach of the Canadian Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses for posting negative comments on Facebook and Twitter about the care given to her grandfather in a long-term care facility before his death. The nurse was accused of violating her grandfather’s confidentiality, not using proper processes for noting complaints about his care, and potentially harming the institution’s reputation. She was found guilty of professional misconduct but not guilty of violating his privacy. The ethical breach was based on her public declarations about the nursing care.

Key to the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses’ Association decision to find the nurse guilty appears to have been the fact that the nurse prefaced remarks with the phrase, “As a nurse . . . ” Adding this phrase to one’s communications confers the authority of scientific and experiential expertise. It further implies that one is versed in the proper procedure and standards for evaluating accuracy and relevance of clinical information and that one’s conclusions are communicated honestly for constructive purposes. The credibility added by identifying the nursing credential is deserved—and therefore carries responsibilities.

What are the conditions for an ethical response when speaking publicly ‘as […]

2016-12-20T15:09:59-05:00December 16th, 2016|Ethics, healthcare social media, Nursing|2 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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