Nurse Ethics

Ethics has become part of the nurses’ life when it comes to decision making and taking actions in the face of adversity or opportunity. Husted and Husted (2008, p.9) states that the patients has lost their power to take actions on their medical conditions due to the lack of knowledge in the health care settings. Hence, the healthcare providers are there to impart their skills and knowledge to treat the patient with the best care. This assignment would discuss how the medical decisions for A B who has undergone radical mastectomy are made using the model for ethical decision-making.

A B’s husband suspects that there might be a spread of the tumors and informed the nurse in the out patient clinic not to mention to her if she had a spread of the tumor.
A, a mother of two had a stressful time when she had to undergo a radical mastectomy and does not want to discuss further about it.
A’s husband also mentioned that their marriage is not working out. Despite seeing a counselor, A is not willing to talk about her disease further.
A has the right to refuse to speak to the counselor and not to know in depth of her disease process.
The ethical dilemma is in this case study is, whether the nurse should refrain herself from reveBng A’s progress on her condition. The second ethical dilemma is should A continue to restrain herself from speaking to her counselor.

Radical mastectomy is the removal of the entire breast which includes pectoral muscles, axillary lymph nodes, all fats, fascia, and adjacent tissues, a surgical method done to treat breast cancer (Merriam-Webster, 2013). Yarbro, Frogge and Goodman (2005) states that the prognoses of patients with non invasive tumors will benefit from the mastectomy, however for patients who have invasive tumors are at probability for relapse. After the mastectomy operation the patients are at risk of wound infection, flap necrosis and seroma formation. Yabro et al. (2005) also mentioned that although breast cancer in young...