AND HOME CARE NURSING
The restructuring of the health care delivery environment adds new dimensions to the ethical issues involved in the practice of nursing. This paper examines some of the more significant of these issues. For purposes of discussion, these issues grouped into concerns related to access to health care services, abuse of patients, client rights, and professional responsibility.
As a result of a combination of factors (increasing costs of health care, changing societal values, advances in treatment therapies, changing demographics, and many others), the delivery of health care services in the United States is undergoing rapid and important change (Mentkowski, & Doherty, 1984). Changes in the locus of delivery of health care services home health care, community health services, ambulatory care, and so forth, as opposed to hospital delivered services create new opportunities for, and new demands on the professional nurse (Weiss, 1983). Economic factors in the new health care delivery environment propel administrators into roles, wherein they attempt to impinge on the autonomy of all health care professionals (Particelli, 1984; Drake, 1982). Public health concerns threaten the traditional patient centered orientation of the professional nurse (Fry, 1983).
The restructuring of the health care delivery environment adds new dimensions to the ethical issues involved in the practice of nursing. This paper examines some of the more significant of these issues. For purposes of discussion, these issues are grouped into concerns related to access to health care services, abuse of patients, client rights, and professional responsibility. These issue groups are considered separately in the discussions which follow.
Access to Services
The trend in the growth in the role of for profit hospitals in the United States may be very much a part of a tre...