Compare and contrast

Compare and contrast your ethical viewpoint, using a minimum of two scholarly sources using APA style, with two of your colleagues. Please compare case 1 to 2 case 1to 3. use to sources for each contrast/compare

Case 1

Many individuals fear prolonged illnesses and painful deaths. As a result, they often opt to use advanced care directives, living wills, and family members. To ensure that their wishes are known and honored and to preserve their autonomy in case they lose their decisional capacity, they rely on the designated individuals’ ability to understand their wishes and honor these wishes. These designated individuals must possess certain, which include integrity and honesty. The NPR podcast talks about the case of Margaret Bentley, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease; she had an advance directive chosen to stop eating if she became deprived entirely of strength and power to make decisions regarding her health(National Public Radio, 2015). The family wanted to carry out her wishes, but her nursing home administrators were unwilling, making it too challenging for her to accomplish her wishes.
The case raises an issue of concern on Ms. Bentley’s autonomy and ethical principle beneficence for nurses. The nurses are evidently making decisions that do not harm the patient, even it is against the patient’s wishes. According to Wilkinson, autonomy of patients may occasionally challenge the nurse’s autonomy in relation to compliance with care (Wilkinson, 1997, p. 36).
If the case were changed to be a model case, nursing autonomy and non-maleficence would be the ethical issues of concern. The nurse would have to consider patient autonomy as determining what is best for the patient.

Case 2

The ethical cases arising from her wish to quicken her death after being diagnosed with Dementia include; interfering with a cognitive person’s ability to make decisions and Caregivers leaving their patients to die. Though Margaret was diagnosed with Dementia, the judge argued that the fact she could open her mouth to accept food shows that her cognitive abilities were still functioning and that her ability to make decisions could not be passed to a third party. The fact that her family wanted her wishes to be fulfilled would mean that her caregivers would have to do a poor job to lead her to die faster and that is not ethically allowed as they are required to give their best care.

If the case were changed to meet a model case, the ethical issues that would come to the forefront would be a battery of tort as nurses and caregivers would be required to voluntarily cause harm to the patients (“Bentley V Maplewood: The right to (be left to) die?” 2019). This would be a tricky situation as one might be enjoying the current position; they are in than they had earlier communicated. One would not know, as they are incapable of communicating.

Case 3

The ethical issues in this case include: what is the quality of life or the patient? What is good care for them? What factors are making the person want to die? Should this request to voluntarily stop eating and drinking be fulfilled as a request to end their life? After considering all these ethical questions, one of the foundations of this wish to hasten death is that the wish is made by a person with advanced disease, but no significant cognitive impairment (Rodríguez-Prat, 2018). If the case study was changed to fit the criteria for a model case, and the nurse used her autonomy to follow the patient’s end of life questions as directed by the family, she would denying a life saving measure to a cognitively impaired patient. The ethical question of should this request be fulfilled comes to the forefront. If I was in this nurse’s position I would be very concerned that the patient’s wishes may have changed and due to her mental condition I would be unable to determine if this was her true request. I would also have to deeply look into what is good care for them? Is her quality of life so bad that is should be ended prematurely? This would be a very difficult decision to make autonomously in the case of this patient with severe dementia. Even though it does not fall outside a nursing scope of practice, I think I would have acted similar to the nurse in the case study and used my judgment to challenge what was being asked of me and take it to a higher authority.