Ethical dilemmas in the implementation of nursing care in intensive care unit
literature review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14528/snr.2019.53.2.222Keywords:
critically ill patients, nurses, intensive therapyAbstract
Introduction: Nurses in intensive care units are faced with many challenges in providing health care to critically ill patients. The purpose of the research was to identify the ethical dilemmas that occur in the implementation of nursing care in intensive care units.
Methods: A systematic review of scientific literature was used. Literature from 2007 to 2017 was reviewed. The following databases were included in the review: COBIB.SI, CINAHL and PubMed. Data search was conducted by using the following key words in Slovene and English: "ethical dilemmas", "nurses", "ethical principles", "critically ill patients", "nursing care in intensive care". From the search set of 78 results, 14 articles were included in the final analysis. A content analysis of research findings was carried out.
Results: The most frequent ethical dilemmas that nurses deal with according to them are: dilemmas related to the treatment and activities of nursing care, dilemmas connected to the organization of health care and ethical dilemmas related to palliative care. Among the most common ethical principles are harmlessness, benevolence and autonomy of critically ill patients.
Discussion and conclusion: The findings of the research contribute to the identification of the most frequent ethical dilemmas experienced in nursing care in an intensive care unit. Individual ethical dilemmas of nurses that occur during the implementation of nursing care with critically ill patients should be examined in greater detail.
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