Ethics & Values
The study of conduce and character.
What is Ethics?
The nurse’s duty to support and defend a patient’s rights and wishes.
What is Advocacy?
Federal law that protects the privacy and security of patient health information.
What is HIPAA?
Patient-reported information documented in quotes or as the patient’s statement.
What is subjective data?
Care that respects a patient’s preferences, values, and cultural beliefs.
What is Client-Centered Care?
Personal beliegs that determine standsrds and shape behavior.
What are Values?
The ethical principle focused on fairness in care delivery and use of resources.
What is Justice?
An unintentional tort that occurs when a nurse fails to act with reasonable care.
What is Negligence?
A document that communicates a patient’s end-of-life wishes if they become incapacitated.
What is an Advance Directive?
The integration of best research evidence, clinical expertise, and patient preferences.
What is Evidence-Based Practice?
A process in nursing that requires balancing scientific knowledge with moral principles when making patient care decisions.
What is Ethical Decision Making?
The ethical principle that emphasizes telling the truth.
What is Veracity?
Intentional tort involving unauthorized physical contact with a patient.
What is Battery?
A legal document in which a patient designates another person to make healthcare decisions if the patient becomes unable to do so.
What is a Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare?
A systematic process used to improve healthcare outcomes and processes.
What is Quality Improvement?
Psychological distress that occurs when a nurse cannot act on what they believe is ethically correct.
What is Moral Distress?
The principle that allows patients to make their own decisions, even if the nurse disagrees.
What is Autonomy?
Legal process in which a patient agrees to treatment after understanding risks and benefits; the nurse is respobsible for witnessing.
What is Informed Consent?
A legal obligation requiring nurses to report suspected abuse or certain communicable diseases.
What is Mandatory Reporting?
A set of national standards designed to reduce patient harm and improve safety in healthcare organizations.
What are the National Patient Safety Goals?
A nurse’s obligation to act in the best interest of the patient by promoting good and preventing harm, even when no benefit to the nurse exists.
What is Beneficence?
The ethical principle that involves keeping promises and commitments to patients.
What is Fidelity?
Law that protects nurses who provide emergency care outside the workplace.
What is the Good Samaritan Law?
Information that is measurable, observable, and obtained through physical assessment or diagnostic data.
What is Objective Data?
A nonpunitive approach to errors that focuses on system improvement rather than individual blame.
What is Just Culture?