Medical Futility in Nursing Care

CARING AND CHOOSING

Bioethics is described as both a field of intellectual inquiry and a professional practice that examines moral questions affecting various disciplines (Arras, 2007). These disciplines include biology, medicine, law, public health, policy and ethics. In these disciplines are scholars, teachers, and clinical practitioners, including nurses. Their work has recently been subjected to an unprecedented turn in perspectives concerning relevant issues and behaviors. Among these sensitive issues are the Do Not Resuscitate Orders in hospitals; the true meaning of informed consent, especially in poor countries; a new understanding concerning clinical trials of various drugs; and the traditional doctor-patient ethics. At least three kinds of bioethical work surfaced from these developments. These are clinical bioethics, policy-oriented bioethics, and bioethics as a theoretical pursuit. The first kind, clinical bioethics, is the most troubling. It utilizes bioethical concepts, values and methods in the hospital or clinic,...
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