Nursing ethics in a developing country

Nursing is a true profession, distinguished by its philosophy of care, its full-time commitment to human wellbeing, its particular blend of knowledge and skills and its valuable service to the community (Curtin & Flaherty, 1982:92). Ethics is vital to nursing. Being a professional implies ethical behaviour and knowledge of what it means to be ethical (Pera & Van Tonder, 1996:v). Ethics is the foundation of committed service to humankind. When nurses practice is an ethical manner they should adhere to ethical principles like autonomy, beneficence, justice, veracity, fidelity, confidentiality and privacy. From this conceptual framework two questions can be asked, namely: Does the behaviour of nurses in health services in South Africa comply with the principles of ethics? How can ethical behaviour be facilitated in nurses in South Africa? The first question was answered by doing a critical analysis of thirty-two case studies of recent ethical phenomena in health services. The ethical principles will be used as criteria for this analysis. Some of the ethical case studies will be presented in this paper to indicate the problems in relation to autonomy, beneficence, justice, veracity and fidelity. It will be demonstrated that from deontological ethical theories nurses are not doing their duty as advocates for the vulnerable patient and from utilitarianism the poor and uneducated patients are being exploited. To empower patients in developing countries it is of vital importance for nurses to behave in an ethical manner. From a literature study a program for rational interaction for moral sensitivity (Rossouw, 1995) and virtue-based ethics in Nursing Education is identified to facilitate moral behaviour amongst nurses in developing countries.