Nurses and Physicians deal with many ethical issues on a daily basis.
The basic ethical principles assist us in understanding, negotiating and navigating these issues. Ethical dilemmas arise when two or more ethical principles apply in a particular case and would lead to different outcomes. Looking at the difference between between beneficence and Non-maleficence as follows: Beneficence: Compassion; taking positive action to help others; desire to do good; core principle of our patient advocacy.Nurses and Physicians are mandatory to act in the best interests of their patients. Patients are vulnerable because of illness and lack medical expertise.
Therefore, patients always rely on their nurses and physicians to offer sound advice and to place the their well-being first. If patients lack decision-making capacity, they need to be protected from making decisions that are contrary to their best interests. Nurses and Physicians must put the interests of their patients ahead of their own interests or those of third parties such as insurers or managed care organizations.Example: An elderly patient falls at home and has a fractured hip. In the emergency room, the nurse acts to provide pain medi cation as soon as possible in an act of beneficence. Another example is when a woman may consider mastectomy or removal of the breast with a 50% survival rate as good, while another woman may consider a retained breast with only a 20% chance of survival as good because it does not distort her body.
Non-malefience: Avoidance of harm or hurt; which is the core of medical oath and nursing ethics.Often in modern times, nonmaleficence extends to making sure you are doing no harm in the beneficent act of using technology to extend life or in using experimental treatments that have not been well tested. Hence the principle of non-maleficence directs physicians to “do no harm” to patients. Physicians must refrain from providing ineffective treatments or acting maliciously toward patients.
This principle, however, offers little useful guidance to physicians because many beneficial treatment also have serious risks/harm. The most important ethical issue is whether the benefits outweigh the burdens.For example, it may be necessary to provide treatment that is not desired in order to prevent the development of a future, more serious health problem. The treatment might be unpleasant, uncomfortable or even painful but this might involve less harm to the patient than would occur, were they not to have it.
Another example is a patient may want the costliest and latest antibiotic on the market while the clinical condition can be managed with a much cheaper alternative. The use of the more expensive antibiotic maybe considered as indiscriminate and possibly leading onto community resistance.
