Ethical And Legal Principles In Nursing | Reflective Essay

Ethical And Legal Principles In Nursing | Reflective Essay This following piece of reflection will be written by using the what model of structured reflection (Driscoll, 2007). The essay will focus on a practice based scenario and will include two ethical principles, these being, Non-Maleficence and Beneficence. It will also cover two legal principles; The Mental Capacity Act and Consent. In order to maintain patients confidentiality (Nursing and Midwifery Council 2008) a pseudonym name will be used throughout this reflective account and the patient will be referred to as Jean. As a trainee assistant practitioner I am accountable in my practice to identify and minimise risk to the patient when carrying out care. It is also my duty to ensure my knowledge and skills are maintained, thus providing equal care to all patients. Furthermore consent must be obtained from the patient prior to carrying out any care. I was asked by the community district nursing team to obtain a blood sample from an 88 year old lady who needed a diabetic review .This investigation will identify any potential problems associated with diabetes (Diabetes UK). Having this test is essential for the well being of the patient. Jean has type 2 diabetes and her condition is controlled by insulin therapy. Having this test is important for the well being of the patient. The nursing midwifery council state that obtaining patients consent is necessary before you can give treatment or care (2002). It is important to obtain consent and failure to do so could be viewed as physical assault on a patient (Lavery 2005). Consent should not be taken for granted and an explanation should be given to the patient prior to the procedure. This ensures that Patients are competent to make an informed decision and have the legal right to decline treatment at any time during their treatment. Jean also has a form of dementia and due to this; she experiences memory loss and confusion. According to Frude the general onset of dementia is one of progressive deterioration in the forgetfulness stages the person experiences difficulty in recalling events (2000.p.285). Within my role as a trainee assistant practitioner I have the responsibility to understand the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and to respect people rights and provide care within the realms of the law. A patient who lacks mental capacity is a person whose brain has been affected from an illness, in this case dementia. The Mental capacity act 2005 is to protect people who are unable to make decision for themselves. The Code of Practice states that last power of attorney can be used to appoint attorney to make decisions about personal welfare (2005 .p120) A person with a personal welfare of lasting power attorney can make a medical or treatment decision for another person. The office of the public guardian has a register for lasting power of attorney this is a legal document which people must be registered (Alzheimers society 2010). It is my responsibility to ensure that patients who lack capacity have the correct support in place so that they can assert their rights. In this case Jean had nominated her daughter to be her lasting power of attorney. Jean now moved in with her daughter and her family. I asked Jeans daughter for permission to take a blood sample from her mother and she gave her consent. However when I approached Jean to explain what I was going to do she seemed very confused and became aggressive towards me. I was told in report that Jean can get confused, but no mention of her being aggressive. I felt very uneasy and made the decision with the support of Jeans daughter, not to take the blood sample. Hendick states the principle of non-maleficence imposes duty to do no harm or to minimize harm (2001 p 22). As Jean was obviously distressed and I did not want to cause her any discomfort I decided not to carry out the procedure. My intention was also not to put Jean or myself at any risk from taking the blood sample as it could lead to either one of us being harmed from a needle stick injury. Hendick states beneficence means that you must act in the way that benefits others, and have both moral and legal duty to do good (2004 p72). Obviously having the test done is in Jeans best interests as her doctor needs to have recent blood values to ensure she is receiving the correct treatment. I believe however, that I acted in Jeans best interests by postponing her blood test to another day finding out from her daughter what the best time of day for Jean, when she would be likely to be more relaxed and approachable. Her daughter had agreed with this decision, another date was arranged As a trainee Assistant Practitioner, I ensure that I abide by ethical and legal principles in all aspects of my role. I feel that it is something that is incorporated into my job often without me even realising. For example, I would never carry out any procedure without gaining the patients consent. This could be verbal or non verbal. I will inform the senior member of staff about the situation I was in and fill in an incident form. I will also insure other team members are aware of Jeans aggression and to ensure that we call her daughter before we visit in the future. Hopefully my next visit will be more successful with better communication skills by planning the visit with her daughter I feel that I learnt a great deal about the Mental Capacity Act through my care of Jean and will continue to increase my skills and knowledge. I will continue to give Jean the care and support she needs. I will ask my Primary Care Trust for any future study days on the Equality Act that has come into force from October 2010, and then I will be able to understand how the act could be relevant within my practice. .

The Sunflower

Melissa Torres Period: 2 2/9/13 The Sunflower Dear Simon Wiesenthal, After reading The Sunflower and having mixed emotions during this book I made my decision. â€Å"What would I have done? † I would have done the same thing you did. Just walk away from all of it. I believe it would be a tough situation to think about and have a response to right then and there. Like Deborah says in her essay, â€Å"The question to be asked is not should the prisoner have forgiven the SS man but could the prisoner have forgiven him? This is obviously saying that no one has the right to forgive anyone on behalf of another. This request brings up several moral questions like, Is it alright to forgive someone who has done no harm to you? Can a person forgive someone on behalf of others? Can anyone really forgive anyone else, or is forgiveness in the hands of a higher power? The soldier asked you for his forgiveness just because you are a Jew, and in the soldiers mind, all Jews are equal. Even th ough you weren’t burned alive, shot dead, or in any other heinous acts in the concentration camps.How could his forgiveness, had he granted it, put the soldier at rest about the hundreds of Jews he has been a party to the murder of? I think you had no right to forgive the soldier. The soldier didn’t commit a crime against you personally, and for you to forgive him would have been an empty phrase with no meaning. The soldier should have asked for forgiveness between himself and all the Jews he murdered. Sven Alkalaj I like that Sven included in his essay what he went through in Bosnia. I agree with Sven that Simon made a good decision not forgiving the soldier.Just as Sven asks in his essay, â€Å"Who is entitled to speak on behalf of the victims? † Simon didn’t have much of a say just because they didn’t torture him. Just like Sven says, Simon was unsure if his response to the dying soldier was okay. It was hard for Simon to get over his response a nd wanted other peoples opinions on his decision. When the nurse attempts to give Simon some of the soldiers possessions. Simon refuses the package. It obviously shows that he didn’t want to do much with the soldiers. The holocaust was a horrible thing, and the killing of thousands of Jews was not okay. Forgetting the crimes would be worse than forgiving the criminal who seeks forgiveness† It is such a atrocious thing, its hard to forget and Sven said it would be bad to forget everything that happened. The Dalai Lama I don’t agree with Lama. He says â€Å"one should forgive the person or persons who have committed atrocities against oneself and mankind. † I am totally against what he says because forgiving the soldier would mean that Simon is okay with what he did. The soldier didn’t really care if the Jew was tortured or not because he just asked the nurse to find a random Jew.I felt like the soldiers apology was a lie and he just wanted to die in peace. But he doesn’t really deserve it after everything he did. Lama also says â€Å"but that is not the Buddhist way,† Lama’s culture is different and believes that forgiveness is okay. But if Simon was to forgive the soldier, it wouldn’t bring back any of the people he killed. The Jews he killed are piled up dead and accepting his apology isn’t going to change a thing. All the awful things that happened will always be in Simon’s mind. Melissa Torres Period: 6 The SunflowerIn The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal the main character, Simon is put in an awkward situation and doesn’t really know how to deal with it. His development from the beginning of the book to the end of the book is kind of crazy. Towards the end of this book he realizes he made the right decision. Simon just needed a little bit of extra help to decipher if what he did was right. With condoning factors supporting the Nazi in The Sunflower is asking for forgiveness bo th out of guilt and amends, there is no possible way to decipher if he should or should not be forgiven.Simon was asked to go clean at a hospital. When he arrived at the hospital the nurse asked him if he was a Jew. Simon said yes and the nurse took him to the bedside of Karl, a 21-year old dying Nazi soldier. Karl was covered in bandages with openings only for his mouth, nose and ears. Karl wanted to tell Simon his story. Karl talked about his childhood and then the conversation came up to him being a Nazi. Karl admitted to shooting a mother, father and their two kids. Karl felt guilty about the hundred of Jews he killed and he didn’t want to die without coming clean to a Jew.Karl asked for forgiveness, he knew he was asking for too much from Simon but without his answer Karl couldn’t die in peace. Simon left the room without a word. When he returned to the hospital the next day, the same nurse came to Simon and told him that Karl had died. Over the next years of the war, time and time again, through all his suffering, Simon thought of Karl and wondered if he should have forgiven him. Over the years, every time Simon would enter a hospital, see a nurse, or a man covered with his head bandaged, he recalls Karl. Many years later Simon questioned whether he had done the right thing.He asked many people about his actions. A few of these people included Jews, Rabbis, a Catholic Cardinal, Christians and even an ex-Nazi. They all had different opinions and different reason of forgiveness. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Simon said nothing. Simon always wondered if he had done the right thing. As the book was coming to an end, Simon started noticing that he did the right think not forgiving Karl. Forgiving him wouldn’t bring back any of the people he killed. The Jews he killed are piled up dead and accepting his apology isn’t going to change a thing.Karl didn’t commit a crime against Simon pe rsonally, and for Simon to forgive Karl would have been an empty phrase with no meaning. Karl should have asked for forgiveness between himself and all the Jews he murdered. The main character’s development throughout the book showed that at first Simon wasn’t confident with his decision and always had the situation on the back of his mind. But towards the end of the book, Simon notices he did make the right decision to just get up, walk away without saying a word. Simon basically needed other peoples opinions to see that he had done the right thing.

Impact of the Internet and Media for Modern Youth

INTERNET ON MODERN YOUTH The content of the current media culture is often blind to a young person’s cultural,economic and educational background. The concept of a media culture has evolvedowing to the increased volume, variety and importance of mediated signs and messagesand the interplay of interlaced meanings. In the world of young people, themedia are saturated by popular culture and penetrate politics, the economy, leisuretime and education. At present, the global media culture is a pedagogic force that hasthe potential to exceed the achievements of institutionalized forms of education.AsHenry Giroux puts it:â€Å"With the rise of new media technologies and the global reach of thehighly concentrated culture industries, the scope and impact of theeducational force of culture in shaping and refiguring all aspects of  daily life appear unprecedented. Yet the current debates have generallyignored the powerful pedagogical influence of popular culture,along with the implicat ions it has for shaping curricula, questioningnotions of high-status knowledge, and redefining the relationship  between the culture of schooling and the cultures of everyday life. 6The concept of media culture encompasses not simply symbolic combinationsof immaterial signs or capricious currents of old and new meanings, but an entire wayof life7 in which images, signs, texts and other audio-visual representations are connectedwith the real fabric of material realities, symbols and artificialities. 8Media culture is pervasive; its messages are an important part of the everydaylives of young people, and their daily activities are structured around media use.Thestories and images in the media become important tools for identity construction. A  pop star  provides a model  for clothing and  other style choices, and language used  bya cartoon character becomes a key factor in the street credibility of young people. Under the present circumstances, there are few places left i n the world where onemight escape the messages and meanings embedded in the televised media culture.In a mediated culture, it can be difficult for young people to discern whose representationsare closest to the truth, which representations to believe, and whichimages matter. This is partly because the emergence of digitalized communication and the commoditization of culture have significantly altered the conditions under whichlife and culture are experienced. Many are still attached to the romantic image of  organic communities in which people converse with one another face-to-face and livein a close-knit local environment.Digital communication is gradually undermining thistraditional approach:â€Å"Most of the ways in which we make meanings, most of our communicationsto other people, are not directly human and expressive, butinteractions in one way or another worked through commodities andcommodity relations: TV, radio, film, magazines, music, commercialdance, style, fashion, co mmercial leisure venues. These are major  realignments. † 9In the world of young people, the media culture may be characterized primarilyin terms of three distinct considerations. First, it is produced and reproduced bydiverse ICT sources.It is therefore imperative to replace the teaching of knowledgeand skills central to agrarian and industrial societies with education in digital literacy. A similar point is made by Douglas Kellner, who contends that in a media culture it isimportant to learn multiple ways of interacting with social reality. 10 Children and young  people must be provided with opportunities to acquire skills in multiple literacies toenable them to develop their identities, social relationships and communities, whether  material, virtual, or a combination of the two.Second, the media culture of youth extends beyond signs and symbols, manifestingitself in young people’s physical appearance and movements. The media cultureinfluence is visible in how youth present themselves to the world through meansmade available by prevailing fashions; the body is a sign that can be used effectivelyto produce a cultural identity. Furthermore, various kinds of media-transmitted skillsand knowledge are stored and translated into movements of the body. This is evidentin a number of youth subcultures involving certain popular sports, games andmusic/dances such as street basketball, skateboarding and hip hop.The body is highly susceptible to different contextual forms of control. Whilethey are in school, pupils’ movements are regulated by certain control mechanismsand cognitive knowledge. In the streets, youth clubs and private spaces, however, their bodies function according  to a different logic. Informal knowledge absorbed throughthe media culture requires some conscious memorizing but also involves physicallearning, quite often commercialized. 11Third, in the experience of young people, media culture represents a sourceof pleasure and relative autonomy compared with home or school.As P. Willis states:â€Å"Informal cultural practices are undertaken because of the pleasuresand satisfactions they bring, including a fuller and more roundedsense of the self, of ‘really being yourself’ within your own knowablecultural world. This entails finding better fits than the institutionally or  ideologically offered ones, between the collective and cultural senses  Ã¢â‚¬â€the way it walks, talks, moves, dances, expresses, displays—  and its actual conditions of existence; finding a way of ‘beingin the world’ with style at school, at work, in the street. 12Experts on young people have long appreciated the complexity of the conceptof youth, especially when examined from a global perspective. The best summation is  perhaps that the concept of youth today is historically and contextually conditioned;in other words, it is relative as well as socially and culturally constructed. 13 In the presentmedia culture, the age at which childhood is perceived to end is declining, and the  period of  youth seems to be  extending upward.It is useful, however, to recall that the majority of young people in the worlddo not live according to the Western conceptions of youth. For them, childhood andadolescence in the Western sense exist only indirectly through media presentations. The same media culture influences seem to be in effect outside the Western world,  but their consequences are  likely to be somewhat different owing mainly to variationsin definitions of childhood and youth and to the different authority relationships  prevailing in individual cultures.Children and young people are often seen as innocent victims of the pervasive and  powerful media. In the extreme view, the breakdown of the nuclear family, teenage  pregnancy, venereal disease, paedophilia, child  trafficking and child prostitutionspreading through the Internet, drug use, juvenile crime, t he degeneration of manners,suicide and religious cults are all seen as problems exacerbated or even inflicted upon

Essay about New Approaches in Environmental Education

Education is very important aspect of our lives. It helps us grow and develop and shapes our ethics and morals. We carry these ethics and morals with us throughout life and are what molds us as characters. Our current school system is very superficial and training us for the industrial system. It enforces that we teach more math and science classes to use as tools for our future. With the main focus on these subjects, we overlook other subjects that also play an important role in how we shape our futures. Environmental education is a very important subject that is often overlooked in the education system. Modernization and industrialization has taken a heavy toll on the one thing that sustains our existence. Through our selfish acts,†¦show more content†¦The economy we live in todays primary concern is making profit, whether or not the benefits outweigh detrimental effects of growth on the natural environment. Everything in the world is objectivized. When an object or an ent ity is objectivized, we take away from the being or self and is reduced to merely material, function, or feature. For example, a cow is a living creature that deserves just as much right to inhabit this planet along side us as anything else. From a objectivized stand point, the cow merely becomes an object of property, food. We only look at what the cow can provide for us. Instrumentalism is direct consequence society’s rational anthropocentrism. Humans believe that they are at the top of a value pyramid because of our intelligence and our ability to rationalize and reason everything. Intrinsic value becomes completely overruled by our own intelligence. To view something morally is to view it intrinsically. Unfortunately, humans only apply instrumental value to things. Beings and entities that are unable to reason, automatically fall under society and are reduced to mere instruments. 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