Principles from American Nurses Association Code of Ethics

Ethical Dilemma
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
The Dilemma
Nurse N had been taking care of a four-year-old child since she was born. One day, the parents to the kid approached her with his father explaining that he had been diagnosed with Huntington's disease which is a degenerative neurological disorder. They wanted the kid to be tested since the father's 50-50 chance meant that the child might have inherited the condition so that if he has inherited, then he would grow up knowing and plan his life. The condition is known to develop at the middle age of an individual but has no treatment. The nurse understood that there is no prevention for the condition, treatment or any genetic or pediatric medicine specialty that would prevent the expression of the gene. According to pediatric and genetic medicine, a test for this disorder is not authorized, and the nurse declined to the request.
The Principles from the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics
To deal with such dilemmas, American Nurses Associations (ANA) established the Code of Ethics outlining the principles to guide the nurses in what to do in such scenarios. There are two provisions that would apply in this case; autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence (Mallari & Tariman, 2016):
Provision 1: Autonomy means that the physicians and care providers create conditions that favor the patient to make own informed decisions. It involves providing information that aids decision making by the patient on the patient about the treatment plan to choose. Since “The nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community or population (Mallari & Tariman, 2016)”.
Provision 2: Beneficence implies an action done for the benefit of others. Beneficence is taken to remove or prevent harms or just improve the situation of others. This is underpinned by the fact that “The nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient”. Protecting patient’s rights includes their right to choose their plan of care, protecting a patient’s safety involves ensuring that they are well informed of the benefits to the family (Mallari & Tariman, 2016).
Provision 3: Nonmaleficence means preventing actions that would cause harm. It involves doing nothing with the situation with the aim of avoiding causing harm. Also, this is underpinned by ...