The nursing profession has long cared for and sought to heal the sick. The nurse today functions within healthcare teams inside hospital systems or in outpatient settings. Throughout the nursing profession, ethics has been important. The Nightingale Pledge was the ethical standard for the ideal nurse adapted from the Hippocratic Oath and named after Florence Nightingale. It held the nurse responsible to God, forbid harming the patient, and commissioned nurses to promote the health of patients and assist physicians in this endeavor. The profession advanced in 1965 to create nurse practitioners to address the needs of access to healthcare. Nurse practitioners are nurses with advanced graduate-level training to examine, diagnose, treat, and prescribe in order to help and heal patients. The nurse practitioner role was originally created for nurses to assist physicians to see more patients independently. Unfortunately, nurse practitioners do not have any ethical framework or oath that shapes their practice. Only one proposal of a nurse practitioner code of ethics has been attempted. There are no oaths for nurse practitioners to serve as an ethical framework for nurse practitioners. Like the Nightingale Pledge that was fashioned from the Hippocratic Oath, nurse practitioners ought to practice from the moral framework of Hippocratism. Moreover, medicine and nursing were both influenced greatly by early Christianity, and Christian nurse practitioners ought to practice Christian Hippocratism. In order to base the virtuous nurse practitioner’s practice in an ethical framework, an Oath for Nurse Practitioners is proposed.
Tag Archives: Hippocratic Oath
Hippocratic Resistance: Conscientious Medicine and Strategic Ethics
Abstract
Conscientious medicine enjoys a long history, with roots reaching back to the Hippocratic Oath. Conscientious objection (CO) as a particular manifestation of such practice carries broader implications for healthcare and society. While patients have the right to decline treatments, they are free to do so for a variety of reasons, even against medical advice (AMA). Healthcare professionals (HCPs), on the other hand, are viewed differently. When it comes to morally questionable interventions, they may be asked to put aside their own convictions out of a sense of obligation or duty. Critics claim that conscientious objection that delays or limits interventions can cause harm. Supporters of conscientious objection argue that there is a growing list of interventions that raise larger questions about the definition of harm and the very nature of humanity. Not only is objection justified in such cases, but it may also be essential to the honest practice of pluralistic medicine. This essay argues that conscientious objection is a defending characteristic of medical ethics as part of the healing identity, with strong historical roots. In addition to safety and policy, conscientious practice acts as an ethical line of defense that has protective qualities for society. Current literature on this topic speaks to the clinical challenges involved with balancing objection and access. This essay uses historical examples going back to Hippocrates to illustrate how respecting individual conscience is strategic for the collective endeavor of medical ethics.
Keywords: Autonomy, Authority, Nonmaleficence, Conscientious, Conscience, Medical Ethics, Integrity, Hippocrates
Revisiting Physician-Assisted Suicide: Reaffirming the Christian Hippocratic Legacy
Support for physician-assisted suicide is growing as a result of ever-expanding cultural pressure. Healthcare professionals should oppose this trend and recognize that physician-assisted suicide is a misguided answer to human suffering. For 25 centuries, the Hippocratic Oath has served as the ultimate credo of the medical professional, and serves as a more trustworthy guide for professional ethics than contemporary culture. In this essay, I reflect on the Hippocratic Oath from a Christian perspective and reaffirm that physician-assisted suicide, despite growing in cultural acceptance, remains a misled answer to human suffering and as such is dangerous for the profession of medicine. Physician-assisted suicide corrupts the medical profession, relies on a distorted view of autonomy, and subverts true compassion. The way forward for the medical professional, in contrast, is an ethic of a “good death” comprised of healing, palliative care, and true compassion.