Dilemmas In Nursing

1325 Words6 Pages
Ethically Administering Medications in the Nursing Profession Every year there are approximately 1.3 million injuries caused by medication administration errors (Healthline, 2016). Nursing, is a profession that faces a variety of ethical dilemmas daily, and it is very important for a nurse to avoid these dilemmas at all costs to assure quality patient-centered care. The Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) Code of Ethics is a set of ethical values developed for registered nurses throughout Canada to help them understand what ethical values are needed when assisting patients with healthcare needs (CNA, 2017). The first ethical value listed in the CNA Code of Ethics is: Providing Safe, Compassionate, Competent, and Ethical Care (CNA, 2017). This…show more content…
Medication administration is a very important skill in the nursing profession, and proper administration must be understood by all nurses to eliminate the common mistake of falsely administering medications, and to ensure Safe, Compassionate, Competent, and Ethical Care (CNA, 2017) is provided to all. Within the nursing profession, providing quality care for patients is the most important duty. Not only does providing quality care ensure better patient outcome and satisfaction, but it also allows nurses to understand the importance of carefully practicing the variety of skills applied to patient-centered care. The ethical value of Providing Safe, Compassionate, Competent, and Ethical Care (CNA, 2017) applies to many areas within the nursing profession, but one of the most important areas is medication administration. When a nurse must…show more content…
Within one issue of the magazine, the ethical value of Providing Safe, Compassionate, Competent, and Ethical Care (CNA, 2017) was avoided by countless nurses while they were administering medications. Bunch of authors (2016) concluded from a study that the wrong dose, drug, time, and patient were the most recurring error in medication administration, and that most of these errors led to irreparable damages and even death. A story in the magazine outlines how a nurse preformed unprofessional conduct by administering a nitro patch to the wrong patient and signed on the wrong date for administration of medications of 10 patients (Alberta RN, 2016). Due to the nurse’s unprofessional actions towards medication administration a patient received the wrong medication while other patients missed the dose of medication they were supposed to receive. To show how serious and common the issue of falsely applying the 5 “rights” for medication administration is, the Alberta RN magazine (2016) included another example of this topic within the same magazine issue. A nurse on this occasion presented the unprofessional action of administering medication 3 times in 20 minutes without an appropriate physician’s order, and failed to comply with the infusion protocol for that specific medication (Alberta RN, 2016). This example shows how the nurse

More about Dilemmas In Nursing

Open Document