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 best […]

2016-11-21T13:03:09-05:00January 21st, 2015|Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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Long-Term Complications After Congenital Heart Defect Repair

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

Even those of us who don’t work in peds or cardiology are familiar with the amazing surgeries done to repair congenital heart defects (CHDs). After surgery, kids with CHDs are literally transformed, their glowing good health a reminder that medical miracles really can happen.

Sometimes, though, health problems develop many years after CHD surgery. These can be consequences of the original defect itself, or of the specific type of repair that was employed.

In this month’s CE feature, “Long-Term Outcomes after Repair of Congenital Heart Defects (part 1),” Marion McRae, an NP in the Guerin Family Congenital Heart Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, discusses the anatomy, physiology, and repair options related to six common CHDs: bicuspid aortic valve, atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, atrioventricular septal defect, coarctation of the aorta, and pulmonic stenosis. One of the types of congenital heart defects covered in the article is shown in the illustration.

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2016-11-21T13:03:10-05:00January 19th, 2015|Nursing, Patients|2 Comments
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Calling All Nurses to Address Health Disparities

Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, is senior adviser for nursing at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and director of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action.

The author with nursing students at the Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College, the first charter school in the country for high school students who want to major in nursing. The author with nursing students at the Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College, the first charter school in the country for high school students who want to major in nursing.

The research on health disparities is stark and continues to increase. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Health Disparities and Inequalities Report–2013 found that mortality rates from chronic illness, premature births, suicide, auto accidents, and drugs were all higher for certain minority populations.

But I believe passionately that nurses and other health professionals can be part of the solution to addressing these disparities. Nurses are privileged to enter into the lives of others in a very intimate way—lives that are often very different than our own.

I understand that it is human nature to be more comfortable with the familiar, but this is not what we are called to in nursing. More […]

2016-11-21T13:03:11-05:00January 16th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|3 Comments
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A Brief Meditation on Love, Loss, and Nursing

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

Manicure, by Julianna Paradisi, 2014 Manicure, by Julianna Paradisi, 2014

As a child, I remember being afraid to fall in love, because I didn’t want to experience the pain of losing people I loved when they died. I don’t know why I thought about this; I only know that I did.

Becoming a nurse has done absolutely nothing to alleviate this fear, but life experience has, to some degree.

Nursing is hard not only because we are there for the dying, but also because we are there for the illnesses and deaths of our own, the people we love, too. Making a living by caring for the sick and dying does not exempt us from personal loss. We grieve and mourn like everyone else.

Recently, I sat in a chair in an emergency department, noticing the sparkly red polish of a woman’s holiday manicure as she rolled past on a gurney. Clearly, she hadn’t anticipated an ER visit as part of her holiday celebrations either. On another gurney, next to my chair, lay my husband, getting an EKG, labs, and IV fluids. The prayer, “Please, don’t let it be a heart attack or a brain tumor,” wove silently through my thoughts.

We were lucky. There was no […]

2016-11-21T13:03:11-05:00January 14th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective|4 Comments
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Health Technology Hazards, 2015: Alarm Issues Still Lead ECRI Top 10

hazard/jasleen kaur, via Flickr hazard/jasleen kaur, via Flickr

It’s a new year, and the ECRI Institute has released its Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2015 report, highlighting new health technology hazards (and some older, persistent ones) for health care facilities and nurses to keep in mind.

Alarm hazards still posed the greatest risk, topping the list at number one for the fourth year running. But this year, the report focused on different solutions. Often, according to the report, strategies for reducing alarm hazards focus on alarm fatigue—a hazard nurses have long battled. Now, the report recommends that health care facilities examine alarm configuration policies and practices for completeness and clinical relevance. These practices include:

  • determining which alarms should be enabled.
  • selecting alarm limits to use.
  • establishing the default alarm priority level.
  • setting alarm volumes.

Repeat hazards that made the list included inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments (#4), robotic surgery complications due to insufficient training (#8), and, in at #2, data integrity issues such as incorrect or missing data in electronic health records and other health IT systems. For an overview of these hazards, see our posts on ECRI top 10 health technology hazards from 2013 and 2014.

And here’s an overview of new hazards that made the cut, along with some of the report’s suggestions […]

2016-11-21T13:03:15-05:00January 12th, 2015|digital health, Nursing, Technology|1 Comment
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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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