Integrity

 

 

In a profession that concerns matters of life and death, the value of integrity cannot be overemphasized. Nurses are charged with overseeing the patient’s health care journey, guided by respect for human dignity and an intuition for the patient’s needs. Such great responsibility requires an individual and institutions of high integrity. It is, therefore, important to understand what integrity entails pertaining to the nursing field. There are different types of integrity in healthcare which include personal and professional integrity. These complement each other though this is not always the case.

Personal integrity is the set of moral and ethical values that an individual strongly adheres to. Such an individual can either be the nurse or the patient. This type of integrity requires one to possess three characteristics including, an integrated self, a personal identity, and a moral standard. The integrated self is coherence between the various aspects of a person (Archer 435). In other terms, this involves exhibiting wholeness portrayed by consistent views and actions. A nurse should not have conflicting views on matters such as honesty or kindness. The other characteristic, personal identity, includes the things that one stands for and identifies with. Persons of integrity must identify with integrity values as their core. Finally, there is the moral standard that acts as a moral compass. This ensures that whichever the circumstances, the individual cannot violate their moral code. For instance, nurses may be pressured by family members of a patient not to disclose distressing information to the patient. A nurse with a moral standard would go against such wishes to avoid dishonesty. To complement personal integrity, healthcare institutions also have laid out professional integrity values.

All nurses are expected to act with professional integrity while discharging their duties. This entails moral accountability and ethical values such as responsibility, hard work, and empathy. Additionally, the healthcare industry has unique ethical principles that reinforce the integrity of both the nurse and the patient. These are the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Autonomy ensures that the patients’ right over their bodies is not violated. As such the nurse should offer all the information and leave the decisions to the patient (Johnstone 41). Beneficence states that all procedures and treatments must be done for the ‘most good’ of the patient. Non-maleficence requires that the nurses do no harm as a result of their decisions. Finally, the principle of Justice reminds the nurses and other health practitioners to carry out their duties with fairness in terms of equal distribution of resources (Johnstone 45). In many cases, professional integrity values complement personal integrity values. However, this is not always the case.

In the course of discharging duty, a nurse might be required to do an action that may contradict personal integrity (Morley 647). An example of such an action is abortion, which is a controversial issue. If a patient applies for this procedure, the hospital is obligated to provide it with adherence to principles of autonomy and justice. However, the nurse involved may feel that the act is immoral hence performing the procedure would violate personal integrity. Such a conflict of professional and personal integrity may hinder the efficient discharge of duties.

There are different types of integrity including personal and professional integrity. Every nurse must possess these qualities to effectively discharge their duties. Although the two types complement each other, there are a few instances when they may contradic

Works Cited

Archer, Alfred. “Integrity and the Value of an Integrated Self.” The Journal of Value Inquiry, vol.51, no.3, 2017, pp. 435-454.

Johnstone, Megan-Jane. Bioethics: A Nursing Perspective. Elsevier, 2019.

Morley, Georgina, et al. “What is ‘Moral Distress’? A Narrative Synthesis of the Literature.” Nursing Ethics, vol. 26, no.3, 2019, pp. 646-662.