Ethical Nursing Care Versus Cost Containment: Considerations to Enhance RN Practice

摘要

Registered nurses (RNs) are constantly challenged to provide quality nursing care while resources are chipped away, sometimes along with their energy, pride, and ability to provide holistic patient care. Many experience frustration and a sense of powerlessness to change their circumstances. We discuss working in a restructured healthcare system and demonstrate how the business model of healthcare routinely undermines the professional knowledge of RNs and their ethical mandate to provide individualized patient-centered care, often causing tensions, strains, and ethical conflicts. As such, many RNs experience chafing and displaced aggression that is harmful to themselves and the nursing profession, and offer suffer in silence. We offer a call to speak up and out, and conclude with recommendations to assist RNs to understand the realities of their work life and improve their practice environments.