Ethical issues in the community

VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN · Apr 19, 2006

I am looking for some discussion points for one class on ethics for our community nursing class. Last year we spent the hour talking about Teri Schiabo [sp]. I was wanting to avoid end of life issues to bring an awareness of the variety of ethical issues out there.
Could someone share some situations I could make into a scenerio and create some discussion points??
sure would like to benefit from the experience of the experts!
thanks
nanette

One way to get around that sort of sand trap is to have a prefabricated list of topics to discuss (perhaps 6 or so). Then divide the students up into groups (pairing up students with strong debating skills with the quieter students to even out the groups) and assign a topic for each group. You can vary this by making one group PRO a controversial topic and another group CON. Even if students in a group do not "agree" with their particular pro or con position, it hones the students' viewpoints and debating skills to have to argue from that perspective. Some topics to explore: the use of medical marijuana, universal health coverage, parental consent for minor abortions/ use of birth control.

Nanette · Apr 20, 2006

Actually, I did not teach the class last year, the faculty who did had a preplanned activity, she purposely let the discussion focus around Teri S because it was such a hot topic at the time and so rich with issues.

I am planning on breaking into groups, I was looking for situations I could make into case studies. I served on an ethics committee for about 10 years when I worked in Acute Care, so I have in patient stories, I wanted to focus on community issues.

Thanks for the ideas, I'll try to work up some things on those topics.

In the meantime, if anyone out there has a specific situation, I'd love to hear the story!

talaxandra · Apr 20, 2006

Off the top of my head:

1. What about family/social problems? For example, a community patient who wants to stay at home but who's care is become onerous on her family - this raises issues of familial duty of care, patient autonomy, competing needs/demands, health care costs, and resource allocation. You could easily come up with a specific case to centre the issue around. Perhaps the carer is also older and in failing health herself - as a student on community health rotation one of the clients was a ninety-odd year old incontinent woman whose never-married daughter (who had devoted her life to caring for her mother) was now mid-seventies and not robust. Or the carer has a family of her own and has to compromise caring for her children to care for her father.

2. You could also look at the implementation of public health initiatives like needle exchange programs - there are a couple of really meaty issues, like benfiting a few compared with the public outrage this strategy often results in. Or "does long-term economic benefit and improved health of a vulnerable population outweigh 'rewarding' risky behaviour", for example.

If I come up with anything else I'll post again. hope this helps :)