ACTUAL QUESTIONS AND CORRECT
ANSWERS
Week 1 - CORRECT ANSWER Week 1 - Nursing Ethical Values & Ethical Decision Making
• "The examination of the norms, values, and principles found in nursing practice."
• Focuses on the relationships within nursing practice and moral commitments within these
relationships
• Nursing ethical values:
o client well-being - means facilitating the client's health and welfare, and preventing or removing
harm
o client choice - means self-determination and includes the right to the information necessary to make
choices and to consent to or refuse care.
o privacy and confidentiality - limited access to a person, the person's body, conversations, bodily
functions or objects immediately associated with the person.
o respect for life - means that human life is precious and needs to be respected, protected and treated
with consideration
o maintaining commitments - keeping promises, being honest and meeting implicit or explicit
obligations toward their clients, themselves, each other, the nursing profession, other members of the
health care team and quality practice settings.
o Truthfulness - means speaking or acting without intending to deceive. Truthfulness also refers to
providing enough information to ensure the client is informed. Omissions are as untruthful as false
information.
o Fairness - means allocating health care resources on the basis of objective health-related factors.
• Ethical dilemma - A situation in which the best course of action is not always clear
• Moral distress - When ethical dilemmas are not acknowledged or effectively dealt with.
• Ethical decision making format
• Assess
o Take into account client's beliefs, values, wishes, and ethnocultural backgrounds
o Examine your beliefs, values, and knowledge
o Consider policies and guidelines, professional codes of ethics and relevant legislation
o Clearly state the ethical concern, issue,
, Week 2 - CORRECT ANSWER Week 2 - Legal and ethical perspectives on decisions about end
of life care; Organ donation
Ethics and morality
• Ethics - a way of understanding and reflecting upon social morality that encompasses moral issues,
norms, and practices
• Moral issues - something should happen, someone out to act in a particular way, an action or
intention is right or wrong, the consequences of an action are good or bad, there is a need to..., a
person has a right to..., or we have a duty to a particular person or to act in a certain way
• Morality - beliefs or traditions about what is determined to be right or wrong in terms of conduct
towards ourselves and others; what we feel ought to happen, or what we believe people ought to do;
arise from our own beliefs and values
• Bioethics - in response to new technologies, choices, and concerns in matters of maintaining and
intervening in the lives of human beings
• Ethical dilemma - a situation in which the best course of action is often not clear, and strong ethical
reasons exist to support each position
• Lack of communication, confusion between facts and values, inadequate gathering of information,
and problem solving in isolation
• Can lead to anxiety, frustration, anger, dissatisfaction
• 4 A's - Ask, Affirms, Assess, and Act
Nursing ethics
• Defined as the examination of the norms, values, and principles in nursing practice
• Focuses on the nurse-client relationship, nurse-nurse relationship, and nurse-physician relationship
Ethical theories
• Consequentialist theories
o Maximize the positive consequences and minimize the negative consequences
o Uses a forward looking perspective
• Utilitarian theories
o Assess the moral rightness of actions based on how much happiness they might produce
o Consequences of each possible alternative must be estimated
o Balance of happiness and unhappines
Week 3 - CORRECT ANSWER Week 3 - Abuse