ICN Code of Ethics in Nursing

Introduction

This essay discusses the breached of ethical and code of conduct by nursing student with regards to the uses of social media. The use of social media is developing rapidly, health professionals need to maintain professional and ethical standards when networking social media. (NMBA). The ICN’s code of ethics for nurses provide a foundation for demonstrating compassion, integrity and advocating. Furthermore, maintaining standards of personal conduct supports the profession’s values, applying proper standards of clinical practice, and promoting collaborative and respectful relationship with colleagues. For those pursuing nursing dissertations, nursing dissertation help often includes guidance on adhering to ethical standards in various contexts. (New code of ethics of nurses and midwife, 2018. The ICN code of ethics has four essential principles that outline the Standards of ethical conduct. These principles include Nurse and people, Nurses and practice, Nurses and the profession and Nurses and co-workers (International council of nurses 2012).

ICN code of ethics – Nurse and people

One of the requirements of ICN code of ethics is that nurses maintain confidentiality in managing personal information and use judgment in sharing information (ICN code of ethics). However, the student has not respected the privacy of the patient. The student has posted derogatory posts and disclosed the information on social media about patients, violating their right to privacy and confidentiality. The nurses have the duty to protect the patients’ privacy and to maintain confidentiality of all the collected information. (Melanie & Michael, 2015). Privacy relates to the patient’s prospect and right to be treated with dignity and respect (Melanie & Michael, 2015). Effective nurse patient’s relationship is based on trust (intext). Patients need to be confident that their most personal information and their basic dignity will be protected by the nurse (NMBA. Code of conduct). The breached of patients trusted will be result in poor relationship between the nurse and the patient and trustworthiness of the profession of nursing. According to NMBA code of conduct, the nurses must protect privacy and confidentiality. This is done by respecting the confidentiality and privacy of the people through getting informed consent before disclosing their information. In relation to the Facebook post, the student has posted derogatory comments about patients without any authority. By doing this he breached the privacy and confidentiality of the patients. The NMBA social media policy ensures that, it is reliable with the nurse’s ethical and legal requirement to protect privacy of the patients. The post has crucial impact on the patients care to maintain integrity. The nurses should not post anything about patient’s privacy on the social media (Melanie & Michael, 2015). Furthermore, the nurses should maintain professional boundaries within health care system. Nurses must reflect on personal and professional views on social media to improve the patient’s quality of care.

The nursing profession recognise, respect the dignity of other nurses towards maintaining the professional relationship while delivering the care. According to the NMBA code of ethics, respect for colleagues includes demonstrating kindness and considering care towards each other. Moreover, the nurses value the ethical consideration and identify protections regards to personal information. The unethical action by the student nurse can affect both the profession and reputation in the eye of the public. This can lead to threaten trust between nurses, which then lead to unprofessional relationship and the poor delivery of nursing care (code of ethics). The ICN code of ethics states that “nurse demonstrates values such as respectfulness, trustworthiness and integrity’’. In relation to the case scenario, disparaging comments about other nurses can lead to lack of trust among colleagues. Trust among nurses is critical in establishing a cooperative workplace environment. Nurses are more happy working with pleasant workplace colleagues, where they can trust of no damages of their privacy by any other colleagues, as compared to work in unpleasant harmful setting. Having trust among the nurses further increases confidence to extend professional behaviour in colleagues and integrity. Being morally responsible for one’s judgement is fundamental to the nursing role. Moral integrity hold nurses to carry values and concept in professional practice (code of ethics for nurses). The unethical and unprofessional issues are associated with social media that can have significant impact on the reputation of the facility.

Most of the hospitals face challenges on ethical conduct and providing quality services, and in the recent era of globalisation, it is a very crucial aspect in the inexpensive environment. The comments on Facebook post can have serious impact on the reputation of the facility. Therefore, issue of quality care fall under the eye of public. These aspects have significant course on the outcome of the services and satisfaction of the patients. The NMBA code of conduct provides a foundation for safe practice on maintaining the professional boundaries to meet the set of the specified standards. The Facebook post by student nurses correlated in unethical behaviour boundaries. Professional boundaries are the boundary between what is acceptable and unactable for a nurse to do. The student has broken the professional boundaries by commenting about the facility on a social media. The maintenance of professional boundaries is important for maintaining order, rationality and predictability which are central to the professional nurse behaviour. Additionally, regarding ICN code of ethics the nurse shares with society the responsibility for commencing and supporting the action to meet the health and social needs of the public, mainly those of vulnerable populations. Maintenance of professional boundaries and social responsibility for public has been threatened by a student nurse as personal information has been posted freely on the social media.