Nursing ethics
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This article aims to examine critically the 'cultural incompatibility' argument, which asserts that disclosure of cancer-related information to patients is incompatible with Turkey's cultural context. For this purpose, a brief overview of the approach to truth-telling in Turkey will first be provided, followed by the claims of two different Turkish authors on the issue and a critical analysis of their approach. ⋯ The article will then examine, in the light of study findings and case reports from Turkey, the concept of patient autonomy as it applies to truth-telling issues. It will be concluded that truth-telling can be compatible with Turkey's cultural context, provided that health care professionals place more emphasis on good communication with their patients.
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The systemic difficulties of health care in the USA have brought to light another issue in nurse-patient advocacy - those who require care yet have inadequate or non-existent access. Patient advocacy has focused on individual nurses who in turn advocate for individual patients, yet, while supporting individual patients is a worthy goal of patient advocacy, systemic problems cannot be adequately addressed in this way. The difficulties nurses face when advocating for patients is well documented in the nursing literature and I argue that, through collective advocacy, professional nursing associations ought to extend the reach of individual nurses in order to address systemic problems in health care institutions and bureaucracies.
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The aim of this study was to assess the opinions and role of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses regarding the distribution of ICU beds. We conducted this research among 30% of the attendees at two ICU congresses in Turkey. A self-administered questionnaire was used, which included 13 cases and allocation criteria. ⋯ According to the findings, the nurses thought that medical benefit and avoiding discrimination were important. On the other hand their ignorance of patients' autonomous preferences arouses suspicions about these nurses' role in advocating for patients' rights. For this reason, nurses' role in allocation decisions should be clearly described and should also be the basis on which intensive care nurses' duties in allocation decisions should be determined.
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In this article we discuss generosity, a virtue that has received little attention in relation to nursing practice. We make a distinction between material generosity and generosity of spirit. ⋯ The talk of the team enables us to understand and make visible the link between generosity, moral imagination and identity construction. The topic of generosity, although contextualized in a UK setting, has relevance to other cultural contexts.