92242 Practice Interactions

Subject level: Undergraduate

Handbook description

This subject builds an appreciation of the social, ethical, legal and resource dimensions of nursing practice in terms of nursing relationships, institutional structures and the broader contexts of health care. An understanding of the issues of social justice, access and equity in relation to health care are developed. The parameters of legal responsibility are established and moral agency is explored and affirmed. This subject deepens participants' insight into self as a therapeutic agent and facilitates the development of a professional commitment to nursing as therapy.

Subject objectives/outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. be more knowledgeable regarding the ethical dimensions of nursing practice, their relationship to legal provisions, and their significance for responsible practice (ANMC competencies: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2)
2. better understand principles and patterns of ethical reasoning and to improve your ability to identify, evaluate and make sound judgements regarding ethically important situations (ANMC competencies: 1.3, 2.3, 2.4)
3. critically evaluate disputed themes in nursing practice, and to understand the relevance of such disputes to particular cases and situations (ANMC competencies: 1.3, 2.1, 2.3, 2.6)
4. appreciate the moral complexity of the relationships between nurses and their patients in a variety of practice contexts (ANMC competencies: 2.5, 2.6)
5. recognise the bearing of administrative and medical power/authority on the scope and quality of ethically responsible nursing practice (ANMC competencies: 1.1, 2.2, 2.5, 2.7).

Content

The content of this subject can be divided into four main components:

• Professional ethics: This component looks at the relationship between ethics generally and occupational or professional ethics. It includes a review of such things as the ethical significance of registration, codes of ethics, and codes of conduct. The emphasis is principally on nursing practice.
• Nurses, patients, and ethics: Fundamental ethical features of nurse-patient relationships are examined — from the perspective of nursing's understanding of patients' needs and rights. Tensions and conflicts here are discussed.
• Ethics, power, and authority: This component involves critical reflection on the ethical significance of medical authority, institutional authority, and the integrity of nursing practice. Such things as the difference between reasonable compromise and 'being morally compromised' are noted.
• Ethics and law: Throughout the subject there is an ongoing reference to specific legal dimensions of issues, and opportunity for students to develop an appropriately complex understanding of the intersections, and tensions, between law and ethics.

The scheduling of these components into classroom and online forum activity is detailed in subject documents at the subject's online site.

Assignments for this subject will relate to one or other of these thematic components.