Title: The ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses
1Code of Ethics for Nursing Students and for
Nurses
Dr. Aidah Alkaissi An-Najah National
Univrsity Faculty of Nursing
2Ethics of Nursing
- Ethics includes values, codes, and principles
that govern decisions in nursing practice and
relationships - Nursing Ethics is the discipline of evaluating
the merits, risks, and social concerns of
activities in the field of nursing - Ethical principles are necessary to guide to
professional development
3Code of Ethics for Nursing Students Code of
Academic and Clinical Conduct
- The code of Academic and Clinical conduct is
based on an understanding that to practice
nursing as a student is an agreement to uphold
the trust with which society has placed in us
4A CODE FOR NURSING STUDENTS
- Advocate the rights of all clients
- Maintain client confidentiality
- Take appropriate action to ensure the safety of
clients, self , and others - Provide care for the client in a timely,
compassionate and professional manner
5A CODE FOR NURSING STUDENTS
- Communicate client care in a truthful
- Promote excellence in nursing by encouraging
lifelong learning and professional development
6A CODE FOR NURSING STUDENTS
- Treat others with respect and promote environment
that respects human rights, values, an choice of
cultural and spiritual beliefs - Collaborate in every reasonable manner with the
academic faculty and clinical staff to ensure the
highest quality of client care -
- Use every opportunity to improve faculty and
clinical staff understanding of the learning
needs of nursing students
7A CODE FOR NURSING STUDENTS
- Encourage faculty, clinical staff, and peers to
mentor nursing students - Refrain from performing any technique or
procedure for which the student has not been
adequately trained - Refrain from any deliberate action or omission of
care in the academic or clinical setting that
creates unnecessary risk of injury to client,
self or others
8A CODE FOR NURSING STUDENTS
- Assist in ensuring that there is full disclosure
and that consent is obtained from clients
regarding any form of treatment or research - Abstain from the use of alcoholic beverages or
any substances in the academic and clinical
setting that impair judgment
9Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Beneficence means doing or promoting good in
such a manner as to safeguard and promote the
interest and well being of patients and clients - Nonmaleficence means to avoid doing harm, to
remove from harm, and to prevent harm - Harm can be physical and so include pain,
disability, discomfort and death but it can also
be psychological and thus include mental stress
10Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Autonomy and consent Principles of self
determination - The cardinal principles of autonomy
-
- The right to full disclosure- the right to know
- The right to privacy
- The right to receive care and treatment
-
11Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Justice The principle of fairness is the basis
for the obligation to treat all clients equally
and fairly - Veracity telling the truth. Clients prefer to
receive accurate information about their
conditions and prognosis even when the outlook is
bleak
12Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Privacy
- To ensure that the patients body is appropriate
covered - To establish a culture of privacy to ensure that
personal information of patients is kept as
private as possible
13Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Confidentiality
- To preserving the human dignity of patients
- Discussing clients outside the clinical setting,
telling friends or family about clients, or even
discussing clients in the elevator with other
workers violates client confidentiality and must
be a voided
14Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Responsibility A nurse, who neglects to give a
patient pain relief can be said to have caused
that patient harm - Proving negligence (i.e. that the nurse is
legally responsible) - It is not only human beings who can cause
something to happen, since conditions (e.g. staff
shortages, poor equipment, inadequate resources,
and so forth) may also cause accidents or result
in a patient being injured
15Principles of Health Care Ethics
- Accountability
- Is about justifying actions, explaining why
something was (or was not) done - The purpose of calling people to account for
their actions is therefore to establish whether
they had good enough reasons for acting in the
way they did
16Principles of Health Care Ethics
- FIDELITY
- The professionals faithfulness or loyalty to
agreements responsibilities accepted as part of
the practice of the profession
17Be competent in your practice
- The nurses are always responsible for their
behaviours - Has to refuse to perform procedures for which
they havent been prepared - Ignorance isnt a legal defence. Neither will
lack of sleep or overwork be accepted as a legal
reason for carelessness about safety measures or
mistakes -
18The ICN- Code of Ethics for Nurses (2006)
- Nurses have four fundamental responsibilities
- To promote health
- To prevent illness
- To restore health
- To alleviate suffering
19The ICN Code of Ethics
- Nursing care is respectful of and unrestricted by
considerations of age, color, creed, culture,
disability or illness, gender, sexual
orientation, nationality, politics, race or
social status
20 NURSES AND PEOPLE
- The nurse shares with society the responsibility
for initiating and supporting action to meet the
health and social needs of the public, in
particular those of vulnerable populations - The nurse also shares responsibility to sustain
and protect the natural environment from
depletion, pollution, degradation and destruction
21 NURSES AND THE PROFESSION
- The nurse is active in developing a core of
research-based professional knowledge - The nurse, acting through the professional
organization, participates in creating and
maintaining safe, equitable social and economic
working conditions in nursing
22Future ImplicationsPlease take with you home and
discuss it with your colleagues
- Scientific research over the past two decades has
resulted in rapidly developing technology,
greatly altering health care and medical and
nursing practice - Research has forced health care providers to
address such issues as - Who should receive the benefits of technology
- What are the long-term results of life-supporting
and life-extending procedures - What kind of future generations we are preparing
23Future Implications
- Having addressed these issues, can we say that
our decisions are ethical? - What will be the ultimate cost in consumer
health? - What will be the actual cost to society?
- Where do nursing responsibilities lie?
24Future Implications
- To ensure the best possible consumer health care
in the future, physicians and nurses will have to
forge a closer, more collegial relationship - Such a relationship will demand a high order of
ethical and professional obligation
25Thank You
Thank You
ICN