Introduction
People’s ethical values are standards for their actions and decisions. Many lives depend on nurses, and therefore the requirements for their ethical commitment, values, and beliefs are incredibly firm. The formation of the moral framework of nurses is influenced by various factors – their childhood, education, relationships with their surroundings, and other aspects of life. The current paper analyzes the author’s ethical perspectives, values, nature, sources, and implications. Although ethics is primarily developed and strengthened at an early age, striving to become professionals and leaders, nurses must be able to reflect and evaluate their moral views to understand the directions for further self-development.
Primary Influences
Ethics affects and defines all spheres of people’s lives, their behavior, and their thinking patterns. Moral beliefs are partly innate but also largely dependent on parenting, culture, religion, and other factors (“Ethics and morality,” n.d.). I note the influence of the environment on my own beliefs and values and see their differences from my acquaintances’ views. For example, my parents taught me that family is the primary value in a person’s life, and everyone can always receive the necessary support in a family. I see that the family does not occupy such an honorable place in the values hierarchy for some of my friends. They love and appreciate their relatives but often rely only on themselves and prefer to devote their efforts to other areas of their lives. The combination of different values and the degree of their importance makes each person unique.
Culture in various manifestations surrounds people and is also an important influence factor. Lullabies, songs, cartoons, films, books, and art carry a unique meaning and contribute to forming values and ethical beliefs. For example, fairy tales and movies that influenced me taught children to be kind, patient, and compassionate. My favorite books showed me the importance of friendly support and self-confidence. Moreover, each piece gives an idea of the bad and good, of what is accepted or not permissible in society. In this concern, I would like to emphasize the modern shifts in culture in favor of individuality, naturalness, and freedom to be remarkable, which will undoubtedly positively affect future generations.
Ethical beliefs formed through culture and parents’ discipline are strengthened, weakened, or transformed during social interactions. For example, when I grew up, my understanding of the well-known golden rule stating that it is necessary to treat others as I want to be treated became less literal. My view was supplemented by respect for individual differences in opinion and preference. Sometimes actions that seemed ethical to me turned out to be inapplicable in certain situations, and I studied and adapted, changing my behavior and views. For instance, sometimes, one can advise friends and acquaintances, but it is better when the advice is requested and does not cross personal boundaries. Therefore, knowledge and experience are other important sources of moral views, values, and beliefs. Thus, in my opinion, the initial factors influencing personal ethics are innate morality, parenting, culture, knowledge, and personal experience.
Ethical Principles Influencing Personal and Professional Life
My critical ethical principles and values shaped by the factors described earlier include respect for family relationships, fairness, tolerance, kindness, responsibility, politeness, and other virtues. My personal qualities and preferences direct my actions, decisions, and opinions about right or wrong. I think my ethical principles are a reasonable basis for becoming a professional nurse. However, I need to develop more principles that will be useful both in my professional and personal life.
Considering the influence on my personal life, my ethical views help me build social relationships. For example, kindness and honesty contribute to a more open and sincere friendship. Politeness helps in a more formal relationship – with colleagues, teachers, management, and other people. Social relations are also crucial in professional activity, especially for nurses. In particular, they are usually closer to patients and more often interact with them. To improve treatment outcomes, nurses promote comfort and establish trust between patients and staff (Tang et al., 2019). My strength is that I appreciate the impact and need for family support. Therefore, if necessary, I will be able to establish relations with the patient’s family to involve them in treatment.
In the professional sphere, at the moment, the most influential principles are responsibility and honesty. For example, one of my critical professional tasks currently is learning. Honesty and commitment play an essential role in fulfilling assignments in a timely and high-quality manner and making every effort to study and understand the material. They push me to overcome fatigue and motivate me every day. However, sometimes I can be very passionate about a particular topic, and I lack objectivity. I also feel the need to develop the values of cooperation and teamwork. My ethics, values, and attitudes continue to change and evolve as I learn more. In particular, in the nursing, ethical dilemmas that one can face may challenge established beliefs and force me to look at the situation from various perspectives.
Ethical Practice of Professional Nursing
The ethics behind nursing is vital for patient’s well-being, but sometimes balancing different principles can be difficult. Nurses should have altruism, respect for human dignity and autonomy, honesty, justice, and other moral qualities (Poorchangizi et al., 2019). Moreover, nurses should navigate complex relationships with patients, their families, colleagues, and management (Hoskins et al., 2018). Even if the individual preparing to become a nurse has such qualities, I think their manifestation may be more specific in medical conditions.
Situations in which one person’s life depends on the actions of another individual can be very pressing. Therefore, I believe that practical experience is a challenge to a person’s moral views. For example, I consider myself a patient, kind, and even altruistic person. However, nurses have a tremendous workload taking a lot of energy. Consequently, there is a need to recuperate through self-care, which can be difficult for people who devote themselves to caring for others. This example is simple since the recreation is necessary for further work. More complex dilemmas require additional training and confidence in personal moral convictions. For instance, if the patients refuse the treatment, the nurse, despite the desire to help them, has to respect the patient’s choice and autonomy.
The values of cooperation and trust in the team, which I still should develop, are of critical importance in nursing practice. One person will not be able to take care of patient’s well-being, and teamwork is needed. Moreover, interdisciplinary cooperation has a significant influence on the development of medicine. Therefore, the severe implications of my ethical views for future practice are continuous work to expand and supplement my perspectives and beliefs. Self-development becomes particularly important when a nurse becomes a leader and an example for their team.
Ethical Leadership and Professional Development Plan
I consider the ethical views I have valuable both in my personal life and in nursing practice. However, the nurse who wants to be a leader needs to develop other qualities. For example, besides some mentioned values, now I lack scientific curiosity, impartiality, and frugality. Leaders must strive for continuous improvements in both self-development and work. As leaders, nurses can look at their work from a different perspective. After becoming ethical leaders, nurses not only provide care for the patient, but also create conditions for quality and cost-effective practice, in which the ethical behavior of individuals is supported (Barkhordari-Sharifabad et al., 2018). Therefore, leaders do not simply behave following moral views but create an ethical culture for employees where they can share and learn new values and enhance the well-being of patients. Ethical leadership has significant potential to increase employee retention, commitment, and satisfaction and improve clinic service for patients.
My values can be helpful in leadership but can also potentially complicate matters. Ethical behavior presented through politeness, tolerance, and responsibility will help become good examples and moral agents for employees. However, although useful in personal relationships, my values of kindness and honesty can become obstacles in leadership conditions. For instance, I can feel discomfort and embarrassment, forcing someone to complete the task. At the same time, leaders often have to motivate and show firmness in relations with colleagues. Moreover, it is necessary to be careful acting as an agent or offering ethical examples for problem-solving. In some situations, discussion of ethics may seem intrusive or even accusatory. Views on what is good and evil differ depending on personal beliefs and values, which can cause additional difficulties.
As a reflection on my ethics and the potential for its application in my personal and professional life, this paper can be an essential step in drawing up a development plan. Realizing what values and beliefs already occupy an important place in my life, I can understand what perspectives require additional attention. By setting myself the goal of becoming an ethical leader nurse, I can more clearly identify the crucial areas for training. Moreover, I can learn, considering the potential ethical dilemmas nurses face and thereby prepare for future work. The main thing in education and practice is to remember that my key goal is to care for patients and their well-being.
Conclusion
Thus, based on values and beliefs, personal ethics significantly affect people’s lives by determining their behavior and thoughts. The formation of ethics occurs under the impact of various factors – there is an innate sense of morality and the influence of environmental aspects such as parenting and culture. I distinguish kindness, responsibility, politeness, honesty, tolerance, and similar virtues among my ethical principles. They help me in my personal and professional life, but it is necessary to develop new views to achieve goals in the future. In particular, the requirements for the ethical commitment of nurses are very high, especially for those who seek to become a leader. I believe that, first of all, I need to work on the values of cooperation and learn to show firmness, if necessary, balancing with the value of kindness. As part of my development, I can practice solving ethical dilemmas and applying the beliefs I require when making decisions.
References
Barkhordari-Sharifabad, M., Ashktorab, T., & Atashzadeh-Shoorideh, F. (2018). Ethical leadership outcomes in nursing: A qualitative study. Nursing Ethics, 25(8), 1051-1063. Web.
Ethics and morality. (n.d.). Psychology Today. Web.
Hoskins, K., Grady, C., & Ulrich, C. M. (2018). Ethics education in nursing: Instruction for future generations of nurses. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 23(1). Web.
Poorchangizi, B., Borhani, F., Abbaszadeh, A., Mirzaee, M., & Farokhzadian, J. (2019). The importance of professional values from nursing students’ perspective. BMC Nursing, 18(1), 1-7. Web.
Tang, C., Tian, B., Zhang, X., Zhang, K., Xiao, X., Simoni, J. M., & Wang, H. (2019). The influence of cultural competence of nurses on patient satisfaction and the mediating effect of patient trust. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(4), 749-759. Web.