Roles, Ethical Considerations, and Effectiveness of the Acute Care Term Paper

Roles, Ethical Considerations, and Effectiveness of the Acute Care Nurse Practitioner - Term Paper Example When faced by a problem such as a HIV positive patient wanting the status to remain confidential, the caregiver should consider the effects of such a decision. The caregiver must be sure that withholding such information will not affect other people in the community such as family (Hendrick, 2011). b) Utilitarianism  is an ethical principle that emphasizes on assessing the rightfulness or wrongness of an action by considering the outcome. According to this code, the utility of any action depends on its ability to generate more good or positive outcomes than the negative consequences (Hendrick, 2011). A good example where utilitarianism applies is on the issue of abortion. In some cases complication occur during labour such that the mother’s life is in danger and only the mother or the baby has a chance of surviving. The caregiver should consider the possibility of saving either the mother or the child. If carrying out an abortion can save the mother’s life, then the a ction is justified since the positive consequences are more. Though abortion entails killing, failure to abort the foetus in a case like this will result in death of both mother and baby. Another example that utilitarianism is applied on cases whereby lying can help prevents mishaps. If telling a lie to a patient will help him or her abide to a procedure or medication that is helpful to them, utilitarian considers the action morally right even though it is against the caregiver’s moral obligation of truthfulness (Hendrick, 2011). c) Justice is a principle that entails relevance of fairness and equality when treating patients irrespective of their diversity. The principle insists on even allotment of health care resources. Justice in health care provision implies ignoring aspects such as gender, race, social status just to mention but a few in deciding the ease of access of health services (Boxwell, 2010) However, the factors remain trivial in deciding the form of treatment fo r the patients. For example, a white person and a black person seeking medical attention should be treated equally without favour (Hendrick, 2011) d) Fidelity is an ethical principle that stresses on the need for heath caregivers to remain faithful, loyal, and abiding to their promises. This enables the health professionals uphold the reputation and credibility of the profession. For example, when a medical practitioner gives an appointment to a patient, this principle requires that the practitioner keep the promise (Hendrick, 2011). e) Veracity is a principle that obliges medical practitioners to tell the truth to maintain their own credibility as well as that of the profession. Medical practitioners are required to tell the entire truth to the patients without any omissions, cloaking, or deception. The truthfulness should also be practiced in operations such as documentation as well as billing. For example, a medical practitioner should not lie to patients regarding their health c ondition for whatever reasons (Hendrick, 2011). f) Autonomy is the freedom or liberty to decide on one’s actions, intentions, or choices based on ones understanding without considering external factors. This principle argues that patients have total sovereignty to choose the course of treatment to be used on them as long as they are adults. However, the patients should first be provided with information that they can understand. The patients are also free to choose