Potential Signs of Professional Boundaries Violation
In professional nursing, professional boundaries refer to the borders that safeguard the space between a client’s vulnerability and professional power. They are boundaries that distinguish nurses’ personal relationships with the people under their care. When the professional boundaries are violated, a nurse is said to be misusing his or her powers.
One sign that a professional boundary is being violated is favoritism. This refers to situations where nurses treat their clients differently from the way they treat others. Nurses are professionally required to treat all patients equally and should not discriminate. When a nurse starts spending his or her breaks with a patient, or when they begin discussing private matters, it means that the professional boundary is just about to be violated or they have been broken already.
If a nurse is violating his or her nurse-patient boundaries, other persons will definitely start talking about it. So when the nurse starts getting feedback from others that their behavior is intrusive or overly familiar, they should take it as a warning and take a step back. Accepting gifts from the client or even buying gifts for them is a sign of professional misconduct. Additionally, being in touch with the client’s family members and friends should also be taken as a sign that professional boundaries are being crossed.
Terminal Sedation, Rational Suicide, and Physician-Assisted Suicide
In some cases, acutely ill patients may not respond to medications, or they could be suffering in ways that make them very uncomfortable. Under such circumstances, the patients could be given terminal sedation. This involves the patients being given medications to induce unconsciousness or sleep as they await death as a result of certain underlying diseases or illnesses. Terminal sedation is mostly accompanied by the withdrawal of life support systems such as artificial respiration or intravenous feeding systems. However, the primary purpose of terminal sedation is usually not to cause the death of the patient but only to relieve suffering.
Rational suicide refers to the process of taking one’s own life after some logical-decision making process. Many people have argued that there is no way suicide can be rational. However, rational suicide has become a crucial discussion topic, considering the number of older persons with debilitating, chronic illnesses. People in support of rational suicide argue that people should have the freedom to decide what they want to do with their lives. They say that even though individuals suffer from illnesses that can be cured, they should have the freedom to end their lives if they want to do it. Those against rational suicide argue that it is immoral and irrational.
In other situations, people may choose to end their lives using some lethal medications, but with the indirect or direct assistance of physicians. This kind of scenario is known as Physician-Assisted Suicide. It differs from withholding or discontinuing medication, which can also result in death.