Beneficence In Nursing

There are numerous competing values or principles which are at play in this case which the nurse must choose between, especially veracity or truth telling to reinstate autonomy to a fully autonomous person versus the prevention of harm.
Veracity is the obligation to be truthful and to not lie or deceive others (Fry and Johnstone 2005). It is an ethical principle which encompasses trust and its fundamentality to the formation of strong patient-nurse relationships. This is a core concept in the provision of good nursing care. This principle is strongly linked with that of autonomy which is the ability to make choices about one’s own life. Veracity and truth telling in giving patients information about their health care needs enables the patient
This principle of ethics is being neglected in this case as there is an absence of any truthful conversation with her as the nurse isn’t aware of what knowledge she has about her diagnosis.
There have been arguments made for the concealment of the truth. One of these is arguments is argument from beneficence which believes that knowing the truth would be harmful to the patient (Dooley and McCarthy 2005). Beneficence refers to actions that are central to promote good or to help the patient, they are based on the moral rules preventing harm to the patient etc (Grace 2009). The argument of beneficence is example of paternalism, the action of overriding a person’s choice or control over their actions to protect them from harm or to promote their own good. Strong paternalism refers to paternalism being used on a fully autonomous person. This has been adopted in this case as Sarah shows the capacity to understand the diagnosis and has expressed to the nurse that she wants to know about her diagnosis. For the argument of beneficence to be adopted, the patient must show that there is potential for her to be put in harm’s way if