Bioethics mediation: the role and importance of nursing advocacy

Ethics consultations are utilized in health care to identify and manage conflict, difficult decision-making, and ethical issues. In bioethics mediation, a more updated approach using interpersonal, mediative, conflict management, and dispute resolution skills is merged with ethical principles to manage dilemmas arising in healthcare settings. This article argues, based on a professional obligation to advocate for the good of the client, that nurses must assume leadership roles in mediation processes. Nurses can initiate and fully participate in formal bioethics mediation and other mediative interventions. Nurse administrators can work to evolve existing ethics consult models to mediation models. Nonetheless, mediative efforts of individual nurses must be grounded in realization of the multifactorial nature of conflict and dilemma in healthcare settings. Multidisciplinary mediative interventions, framed by sound institutional policies, may best serve the complex needs of ethically vulnerable clients. To best advocate for these at-risk clients, nurses must assume various leadership roles in mediation processes.