NUM2405: Legal and Ethical Practice in Nursing and Midwifery - Ethical Principles and Doctrines

A comprehensive vocabulary review of core bioethical principles, ethical doctrines, and professional nursing standards from the NUM2405 lecture.

Ethical Values

Universal rules of conduct that provide a practical basis for identifying what kinds of actions, intentions, and motives are valued.

Ethics

Moral principles that govern how a person or a group will behave or conduct themselves, encompassing the right and wrong of actions and the decision-making process of determining the ultimate consequences of those actions.

Accountability (in Nursing)

The obligation of nurses to answer to the people in their care, the nursing regulatory authority, their employers, and the public for their decisions, actions, behaviours, and inherent professional responsibilities, including documentation (NMBA, 2024).

Ethical Principles

The foundational guidelines that inform the understanding of right and wrong, shaping moral judgments and actions when making patient care decisions (Hadadd & Geiger, 2024).

Veracity

An ethical principle concerned with telling the 'whole' truth.

Fidelity

An ethical principle defined by loyalty, fairness, advocacy, and dedication.

Respect for Others

Identified as the highest ethical principle in nursing practice.

Beneficence

A prima facie principle derived from the Latin word benefices meaning to do good; in nursing, it relates to the promotion of good and ensuring the patient's best interest is considered regardless of the nurse's personal opinion.

Rules of Beneficence

Specific moral obligations to: promote and defend the rights of others, remove harm occurring to others, remove conditions that will cause harm to others, help people with disabilities, and rescue a person in danger.

Nonmaleficence

The ethical principle requiring the avoidance or minimisation of harm, serving as the cornerstone of healthcare practice and legislation relating to duty of care, negligence, and malpractice.

Harm

Injury, injustice, or a violation of rights that can be physical, psychological, or financial (or a combination) and may be intentional or unintentional.

Rules of Nonmaleficence

Rules of conduct specifying: do not kill, do not cause pain, do not incapacitate, do not cause offense, and do not deprive others of the goods of life.

Autonomy

The right to self-determination, self-rule, or self-governance; the ability to exercise choice and act on preferences within legal, social, and moral constraints (Beauchamp & Childress, 2019).

Autonomy (in Nursing Practice)

Providing adequate information to allow patients to make their own decisions based on their beliefs and values (even if different from the nurse's), as well as only providing nursing care within the scope of practice defined by state and organizational rules.

Justice

An ethical principle defined as fairness or an equal distribution of benefits, requiring impartiality regarding a patient's age, ethnicity, economic status, religion, or sexual orientation.

Distributive Justice

An ethical concept specifying that each person should receive an equal share according to need, effort, contribution, merit, and free-market exchanges.

Doctrine

A set of beliefs, principles, or policies established and adhered to by an individual, organization, or group that serves as a guiding framework, governing conduct and acting as a reference point for practice and interpretation.

Doctrine of Double Effect

An ethical doctrine stating that if doing something morally good produces a morally bad side-effect, the action is ethically permissible providing the bad side-effect was not intended, even if it was foreseen as probable.

ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses

An international ethical framework first adopted by the International Council of Nurses in 1953 that provides guidance regarding nurses' roles, responsibilities, behaviours, decision-making, and relationships with patients.

Four Principal Elements of the ICN Code of Ethics

The four core elements providing the framework for ethical conduct: (1) Nurses and patients or other people requiring care or services, (2) Nurses and practice, (3) Nurses and the profession, and (4) Nurses and global health.