Not to tell the truth jeopardizes staff-patient trust, undermines the patient's capacity for autonomy, and deprives the terminally-ill of a 'good death'.
Telling the truth needs to be done in a timely and sensitive manner. Relationship between nurse, patient and family can be jeopardized if truthfulness is not part of the everyday communication.
In end-of-life care, and especially palliative care, effective communication with patients, caregivers, and loved ones is of vital importance. Poor communication can result in the family having significant misunderstanding of end-of-life processes.
If a patient has decision-making capacity and is of sound mind, it's our ethical responsibility to tell them the truth. Sometimes if our own perspective is cloudy or if we are afraid of hurting our loved one, it can complicate this truth-telling process.
During EOL care, ethical dilemmas may arise from situations such as communication breakdowns, patient autonomy being compromised, ineffective symptom management, non-beneficial care, and shared decision making.
Even when a person has been living with a terminal illness for a while, it can be a shock for them and their loved ones when they reach the last days of their life. It's important to tell someone that they're dying so that they and their loved ones can prepare and make the most of the time they have left.
If the physician has some compelling reason to think that disclosure would create a real and predictable harmful effect on the patient, it may be justified to withhold truthful information.
Poor communication often creates a tense environment where people are not motivated to be productive and not inspired to collaborate. This lack of motivation then affects how employees relate to clients and potential customers, negatively affecting the bottom line.
Ineffective communication can lead to many misunderstandings or disagreements, too. This can include making mistakes or completing tasks incorrectly, having your feelings hurt, causing arguments, or distancing yourself from others.
Negative interactions can lead a patient to feel dissatisfied with their medical care. They might feel anxious, concerned or frustrated. It could also lead to a lack of trust in the doctor-patient relationship. Negative interactions not only affect patients but they also affect the physician too.
Truth-telling or honesty is seen as a basic moral principle, rule, or value. Withholding information or otherwise deceiving the patient would seem to at least disrespect patient autonomy and potentially harm the patient.
The Importance of Truth. Truth matters, both to us as individuals and to society as a whole. As individuals, being truthful means that we can grow and mature, learning from our mistakes. For society, truthfulness makes social bonds, and lying and hypocrisy break them.
Truth-telling makes possible freedom and trust between people, and, in the life of faith, it makes possible closeness to God. People of good will must always be willing to demand truth-telling because no one should be treated as if they were not worthy of being told the truth.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that ethical doctors will not intentionally deceive their patients. The American Medical Association states: “A physician shall . . . be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians . . . engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.”
Veracity is being completely truthful with patients; nurses must not withhold the whole truth from clients even when it may lead to patient distress.
Health professionals are expected to always tell the truth. This is based on the argument that, lying is wrong and disrespecting the person's autonomy is not right. However, this may not necessarily be the case, as the 'right not to know' the truth, should as well be respected by them.
In palliative care practice dilemmas and conflicts about truth-telling may involve collusion between health care professionals and the patients' relatives to withhold the truth from the patient.
Saying it freely and often can benefit both them and you. When speaking with someone who is dying, it's important to follow their lead and let them be in control of the conversation. They may wish to speak about big events in their life or reminiscence about memories.
Talking to someone with a terminal illness about dying can help them to express their concerns and fears, and make plans for what's important to them. Talking about dying can be difficult but there are things you can do to help the conversation be more meaningful for your patient.
Since the decisions to be made may concern patients' family members and society as well as the patients, it is important to protect the rights, dignity, and vigor of all parties involved in the clinical ethical decision-making process.
These include futile or nonbeneficial care, pain management, patient autonomy (lack of decisional capacity, patient confidentiality or privacy), advance care planning (disregard of patients' wishes), communication difficulties, conflicts between patients/families and health providers, and conflicts between nurses and ...
Critical care nurses are often confronted with ethical and legal dilemmas related to informed consent, withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment, organ and tissue transplantation, confidentiality, and increasingly, justice in the distribution of healthcare resources.