Nurses to the Patients

Nurses are usually held to a high standard of moral behavior and ethical practice. The nurses failed to assess and provide appropriate care to the patient. There are ethical principles in nursing that are essential and it is imperative that nurses understand and utilize them. “Ethical principles are basic and obvious moral truths that guide deliberation and action”

(Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014, p. 59), and beneficence and nonmaleficence are apparent in this case study. They did not follow the principle of beneficence. First, the nurses were not thinking of the patients, they were all on break together leaving very few nursing assistants in charge of 100 patients. They could never justify why all three had to go at the same time, and someone should of delegated break times to spread out the times the nurses were actually off the unit. Second, if the nurses, even one nurse would have responded and assessed the patients cry for help, harm could have been avoided to the Mr. Richards. Part of the standard of care is a thorough assessment. These nurses violated the entire nursing process (ANA, 2014).

Severe short staffing caused an institutional constraint. Nurses were not able to adequately care and assess this large of a patient assignment. All three nurses on staff that day all took a break together. If they were so understaffed, how did they all leave the floor at the same time? The passage did not say if the nurses reported the understaffing that day, so they didn’t really have any professional constraints. The nurses had a moral and legal obligation to provide care and refrained from doing so.

The nurses were culpable in this patient, they did not respond to the patient’s complaints, nor thoroughly assess the patent. A thorough assessment would have revealed something was seriously wrong and maybe diverted the poor outcome of the patient.

As stated in Provision Six, “Professional nurses make decisions that significantly