Rhyme & Reason (Mnemonic Aids)
This 5-letter acronym dictates that you cannot share patient health data with your friends, family, or on social media.
What is HIPPA?
When allocating scarce resources, like one ICU bed between two sick patients, a nurse relies on this ethical principle of fairness.
What is Justice?
If you didn't chart it, legally speaking, this happened
What is "It wasn't done"?
This 5-letter acronym dictates that you cannot share patient health data with your friends, family, or on social media.
What is HIPAA?
Before a surgical procedure, the doctor must explain the risks and benefits to get this type of permission from the patient.
What is Informed Consent?
Think "Benefit." This principle means "doing good" and acting in the patient’s best interest.
What is Beneficence?
A competent patient decides they want to leave the hospital against medical advice. If you lock them in their room or restrain them, you can be sued for this.
What is False Imprisonment?
A nurse forgets to put up the bed rails for a confused patient, and the patient falls. This "careless accident" is known legally as this.
What is Negligence?
Before a surgical procedure, the doctor must explain the risks and benefits to get this type of permission from the patient.
What is Informed Consent?
To remember this term, think of a "Referee blowing a loud alarm" to alert others that a foul/illegal act is happening inside a company or hospital.
What is Whistleblowing?
Non-maleficence sounds like Maleficent (the villain). Your ultimate goal under this principle is to do this.
What is "Do no harm"?
This term describes a situation where two ethical principles collide, and there is no clear "correct" answer (e.g., keeping a secret vs. saving a life).
What is an Ethical Dilemma?
When negligence is committed causes harm, it gets upgraded to this legal term.
What is Malpractice?
A competent patient decides they want to leave the hospital against medical advice. If you lock them in their room or restrain them, you can be sued for this.
What is False Imprisonment?
To remember this 4-letter word for a civil wrong, students use the rhyming phrase: "If you do something contorted to a patient, you've committed a..."
What is a Tort?
Fidelity sounds like "infidelity" or "semper fi." In nursing, it means keeping your promises and doing this.
What is being faithful/loyal to commitments (or keeping your word)?
If a nurse witnesses an impaired coworker and chooses to report it to protect patients, they are practicing this specific application of bioethics.
What is Paternalism (or Advocacy/Non-maleficence)?
Threatening to insert an IV or give an injection against a conscious patient’s will is called Assault. Actually doing it without their consent is called this.
What is Battery?
"Auto-no-me" means nobody else makes the rules for me. It refers to this ethical principle of self-determination.
What is Autonomy?
Remember this federal act by looking at its first three letters (E-M-T) and remembering it legally forces hospitals to stabilize anyone coming into the Emergency Medical room, regardless of their ability to pay.
What is the EMTALA Act? (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act)
Veracity sounds like "very true." It requires nurses to practice this virtue at all times.
What is truthfulness/honesty?
The "Code of Ethics for Nurses" is a non-negotiable standard maintained by this major American nursing organization.
What is the ANA (American Nurses Association)?
Broadly speaking, the laws that define your specific boundaries and responsibilities as a nurse in your state are called this.
What is the Nurse Practice Act (NPA)?
A nurse tells a patient a medication will taste like candy just to get them to swallow it. This violates which "truthful" principle?
What is Veracity?
Think of the "All" at the start of this word to remember the unselfish concern for the well-being of all other people, putting patients entirely ahead of yourself.
What is Altruism?