Assignment Task:
Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) track, your ethics case analysis should relate to primary care or critical care situations that involve real ethical dilemmas. Here are a few strong, relevant topics you can choose from-each meets the criteria for an ethical conflict and ties into your specialty:
2. Parental Refusal of Life-Saving Treatment for a Child (e.g., Jehovah's Witness refusing blood transfusion)
- Ethical Conflict: Parental rights vs. provider's duty to save life.
- Why it fits: Choosing to honor religious beliefs may result in the child's death; overriding the parents may violate cultural/religious freedom. Need Assignment Help?
- Stakeholders: Child, parents, healthcare provider, legal system, ethics board.
3. Treating Undocumented Immigrants Who Cannot Pay
- Ethical Conflict: Justice (fair resource distribution) vs. beneficence (providing care).
- Why it fits: You must choose between providing care despite lack of payment or refusing to help due to limited resources.
- Stakeholders: Patient, provider, hospital administration, other patients, community.
4. Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain vs. Risk of Addiction
- Ethical Conflict: Beneficence (relieving pain) vs. nonmaleficence (risk of harm).
- Why it fits: FNP must weigh risk of addiction against patient's suffering.
- Stakeholders: Patient, provider, pharmacy, regulatory bodies, family.
5. End-of-Life Decision: DNR in a Confused or Intubated Patient Without a Proxy
- Ethical Conflict: Autonomy vs. beneficence/nonmaleficence.
- Why it fits: When the patient cannot speak and there's no decision-maker, you must decide whether to continue aggressive treatment.
- Stakeholders: Patient, provider, ethics committee, staff, legal system.
Case analysis provides you with the opportunity to critically analyze a situation of ethical conflict related to APN practice. This assignment requires you to begin to incorporate pieces of the Ethics Toolbox (moral theories and ethical principles) in your analysis to articulate different
ways to think about the case. (We will add provisions of the ANA Code of Ethics in a later assignment). The analysis includes an unambiguous statement of the ethically correct action. The case analysis is worth 100 points and 20% of the course grade. The grading rubric is provided. APA format is required.
Select a Topic
The following are possible topics for your Ethics Case Analysis. You may choose another topic not on this list as long as it meets the definition of a situation of ethical conflict. You do not need to obtain instructor approval for a topic.
- Pediatrics-Autonomy, Advocacy. Decision-making for children, Refusal of medical intervention, Interventions with questionable medical indication, Care of extremely premature neonates.
- OB/Gyn-Family planning, Reproductive health for adolescents, Elective c-sections on request, Sterilization (of persons with diminished capacity), Prenatal testing, Substance and alcohol abuse, Home births, Assisted reproductive technologies, Fertility treatment (transgender, experimental, unconventional).
- Mental Health-Involuntary commitment, Suicidal patients, Those who are dangerous to others, Refusal of treatment.
- Acute Care-Refusal of treatment, Organ transplantation (living and cadaveric organs, recipient selection).
- Public Health-Emergencies (anthrax, SARS, TB, Ebola), Refusal of public health interventions, Requests for interventions that are not recommended, Vaccinations (childhood, outbreak, HPV), Access to health care for undocumented immigrants.
- Genomic Testing-Disclosure of results, Genetic discrimination, Genetic enhancement.
- End of Life-Insistence on life-sustaining interventions... by patients or physicians, Advanced directives, Surrogate decision-making, Compassionate use of experimental drugs prior to FDA approval.
Choose something that you are interested in, as you will carry this topic through Assignment 7.1, Activity 9.1, and Discussion 10.1.
Also, this list of ideas can be used for your Current Topics presentation in Week 12; however, the topics must be different from your original Ethics Case Analysis and be related to the specialty track that you are in.
Format:
Write concisely and in a scholarly manner. Do not exceed five double-spaced pages (excluding Title Page and References). The instructor will stop reading at the bottom of page five. APA, 7th edition, professional paper format is required for the title page, citations, references, and headings (no author's note and abstract are required). Organize your paper under the following headings. Use the suggested page allocations below as a guide.
The Ethics Case Analysis contains four sections:
1. Situation of ethical conflict (1/2 page)
o Briefly, identify the topic you chose for this assignment and explain why the topic meets the definition of a situation of ethical conflict. (The Oxford English Dictionary defines an ethical conflict as "a situation in which a person must choose between two courses of action of (apparent) equal moral importance so that the choice necessarily entails the transgression of an important moral principle." In other words, each of the two actions is problematic and may lead to undesirable outcomes.)
o Concisely describe some undesirable outcomes with both actions to illustrate why your topic meets the definition of ethical conflict.
2. Stakeholders (1 page)
o Identify the stakeholders. (The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a stakeholder as "one who is involved in or affected by a course of action.")
o Discuss possible values, beliefs, and interests that may influence the perceptions of the stakeholders about the ethical conflict. For example, depending on your topic, factors that may influence how a stakeholder views the situation may include religion, culture, professional identity, institutional values, and societal norms or beliefs.
3. Critical analysis (includes alternative ways of thinking about the issue) (3 pages)
o This is the most substantive section of the assignment. Analyze the situation of ethical conflict identified in the first section using moral theories and ethical principles relevant to your topic. Organize this section using these headings:
1. Moral theories (consequentialist, deontology, virtue ethics, rights theory)
2. Ethical principles (autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice)
o You are expected to effectively utilize all of the moral theories and ethical principles in a well-developed and scholarly analysis of the situation of ethical conflict that illustrates how the elements of the Ethics Toolbox provide guidance in the situation.
o Be sure and articulate how proponents and opponents can use the same moral theories and ethical principles to support their perspectives.
4. Conclusion (1/2 page)
o Begin this section by unequivocally stating the ethically correct action in one sentence.
o Then, summarize the moral theories and ethical principles that were most persuasive to you in arriving at the ethically correct action for your topic (e.g., why they made the strongest case for whether the practice is ethical or not ethical).
o Do not re-state the entire case you made in the analysis section.