Ethical Theories and Dilemmas

Nurses are daily faced with questions of ethics. Most of these questions are minor, everyday issues that individual nurses can resolve on their own, without the need for involvement of their colleagues, and with no, or few, implications for patient care. From time to time, however, issues with major implications for patient care will arise that require the members of the perioperative team to make significant ethical decisions. In this article, Suzanne Hughes discusses the nature of ethics, the ethical questions that nurses might have to address and the consequences arising from decisions.