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| 15612. NURSING ETHICS CASE STUDY: FORCE-FEEDING A DEPRESSED, TERMINALLY ILL PATIENT. This case concerns a depressed 47-year-old man who has recently been diagnosed with leukemia and is currently undergoing ECT treatments in a psychiatric ward. The severely depressed man is refusing to eat or drink. Nursing staff has responded with a plan to force-feed the patient through an NG tube. The ethical problems involve a conflict between patient autonomy, the medical staff's obligation to take action which benefits the patient, and their duty to avoiding harming the patient. The analysis states the ethical problem, identifies the principle decision-makers, outlines alternative courses of action and their ethical consequences, ranks the alternatives, and considers ways to avoid similar problems in the future. KEYWORDS: nursing ethics dying patients starvation feeding case studies. 8 pages, 1 footnote, 1 bibliographic source. 2,242 words. |
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