ABSTRACT
Introduction We have established in the previous chapter that as nurses we need caring values and beliefs to guide our healthcare practice decision making. It may be useful for you to find out from your next clinical placement what ethical and philosophical values the care team uses to provide care. You may hear the ward manager and members of the team talking about the ward philosophy. What is it? What ethical values drive it? These values represent the normative ethics or ethical theories that guide healthcare decision making. The ward staff may subscribe to the view that all patients must be treated respectfully and helped to gain early independence and avoid learned helplessness. We must tell patients the truth and deal fairly with them irrespective of their health status, socio-economic background, race, colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation. We may be told by the ward staff that they value patients’ right to decide, consent, refuse consent and so on. We may be told that the ward believes that what it does should benefit the patients and that we should do nothing to harm our patients. We may even be told that on this ward we aim to be fair to staff and patients, and so on. Most of these philosophical or caring principles can be summed up at fitting the ethical principle known as principlism. The four major ethical principles described under the concept of principlism by Beauchamp and Childress (2001), and which most clinicians and ethical theorists agree guide healthcare practice, are autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice.
