Nursing Ethical Dilemmas

Ethical dilemmas are a common issue in the healthcare system and nursing careers. Nurse shortages throughout the healthcare system is not a new issue and has been a prevalent concern in Canada ever before the COVID-19 pandemic (Baumann & Crea-Arensio, 2023). However, the pandemic had an immense negative impact on the healthcare system leading many nurses to feel distressed and burned out, lowering their satisfaction at work and intensifying the shortage issue (Baumann & Crea-Arensio, 2023). The critical state of the current nursing shortage causes a cycle of nurses becoming burnout and quitting, as well as new students avoiding the nursing profession due to the unsafe and stressful work conditions (Baumann & Crea-Arensio, 2023). The idea of nursing shortages …show more content…
Experiencing conflicts with the duty of justice is very apparent during the ethical dilemma of nursing shortages. Justice simply entails treating everyone fairly and equally. However, when time and resources are restricted during times of understaffing, nurses face the ethical dilemma of prioritizing tasks (Virani, 2021). Through this, a nurse may pay more attention and allocate more of their time to one patient if their condition is more critical than the others. Although there is reasoning behind this prioritization, it still goes against the duty of justice as the other patients are not receiving that same treatment or time from the nurse (Virani, 2021). Finally, the duty of non-maleficence is the more apparent duty that is affected by nursing shortages. In summary, non-maleficence is the action of avoiding and preventing harm to others, in no way should one inflict suffering onto another person (Gillon, 1985). Nursing shortages, however, greatly put this duty at risk. Being overworked and overloaded with patients, nurses are attempting to complete all their tasks at hand and may rush (Bell et al.,

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