What Would Florence Nightingale Think about Today's Bioethical Issues?

2010 is the International Year of the nurse. Today's nurses face a host of complicated issues in their day-to-day practice. During the centennial of Florence Nightingale's death, Nurse.com asked noted Nightingale scholars to predict what the founder of modern-day nursing would make of it all.

What insights does Florence Nightingale bring to today's ethical dilemmas?

I'm so glad to see that this next paragraph was included in ethical dilemmas. What back when I first came out of nursing school in the mid 70's the nurse was not really allowed to engage the patient in conversation about end of life issues, such as whether or not they wanted to be DNR.  I was severely disciplined for having done this without the doctor's permission. Now it is a matter of common practice. Here is what the above article says on that topic:

Nightingale would be pleased today with the ways in which nurses engage in end-of-life care in hospice and create healing environments in hospitals, as well as their strategies for bringing closure to personal affairs, such as medical directives, living wills and durable powers of attorney. She would ask us to bring more healing rituals into dying and to be reminded that patients should not be left to die alone unless that is their choice.

A related issue is Parent's Right to make healthcare decisions for their Children. Save the Child is a contemporary novel written by Margaret L. Turley, an RN with 34 years experience. She was inspired to write on this topic because of current events like the Parker Jensen Case in 2003, and the Danny Houser case in 2009. Turley's blog post on bioethics discusses ways families can deal with such situations. As nurses we should be aware of possible situations that require extra assistance and counseling in this area.

Save the Child will be released in September, 2010 during a unique book launch that is sponsoring a fund-raiser for the American Association for Cancer Research by the group Turley belongs to: Writers Unite to Fight Cancer.