The Nurse’s Healthcare Ethics Committee Handbook

Book excerpt: Healthcare ethics help guide and influence the way physicians, nurses, and other members of the healthcare team care for patients and make decisions. Ethics address the moral dilemmas that arise out of conflicts with duties or obligations as well as the consequences of decision-making. As healthcare has continued to grow and evolve, so has the way healthcare ethics are handled. Nurses are uniquely positioned to serve as leaders in healthcare ethics because they are intricately involved in all aspects of patient care, including care coordination, recommendations for plans of care, provision of life-sustaining interventions, and patient education. The Nurse’s Healthcare Ethics Committee Handbook focuses on a nurse-led ethics consultative service. Authors Angeline Dewey and Andrea Holecek provide tools that nursing students, professionals, administrators, and other members of the healthcare team need to develop infrastructure and processes that support nurses in an ethics committee leadership role. Filled with real-life scenarios, this book outlines a step-by-step process for nurses to evaluate ethical cases and the risks involved