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Whose Side are You On?
Abstract
Nurses have power. Like all other health care professionals, whatever strategies they use to make themselves more accessible, they cannot remove the power dimension in the professional—client relationship.
Medical Ethics is a well established field of Applied Ethics; moral philosophy has for some time been applied to the doctor-patient relationship and to issues of life and death. More recently, however, the newer area of Nursing Ethics has attracted attention. It is the task of this paper to explore the extent to which Nursing Ethics represents a distinct subject of study.
‘You know what it is until someone asks you to define it’ said St. Augustine of time. The same can be said of much else in life. You think you know your values until someone asks you what they are.
It would probably be a truism to say that most professional nurses consider patient/client advocacy to be an essential component of their role—indeed, there is a UKCC Advisory paper (Exercising Accountability, 1989), which categorically states that this is so. ‘The introductory paragraphs of the Code of Professional Conduct, together with several of its clauses, include clearly the expectation that the practitioner will accept a role as an advocate on behalf of his or her patients/clients.’
Some professional nurses, however, consider advocacy to be too altruistic an activity and prefer to leave it to others.
The involvement of relatives in patient care is frequently associated with 'good nursing practice'. However, according to recent literature it is a practice that is not widely adopted. The intention of this study was to ascertain the extent of relatives' involvement in caring for the elderly mentally ill, from both relatives' and nurses' perspectives. Following analysis of more than 130 questionnaires it was found that nursing staff responded very positively towards greater involvement of relatives wishing to encourage their participation. In comparison relatives felt that their role in patient care was negligible, but despite this did not wish to seek greater involvement. The discussion that follows examines possible reasons for these findings and the implications for future practice.
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