What is the moral dilemma about?
A nurse is on duty and works in labor and delivery department. Upon walking into the delivery is a woman who trolled and bullied her when they were in high school because she was big. This led to them not speaking to each other until they finished high school and hoped that they never met each other again. Upon setting eyes on each the woman in labor could not help avoiding her due to the intense pain. The nurse gets a flashback of events and tears of emotions roll down her cheeks but immediately remembers its her job to help a patient.
What virtue or virtues should be shown? (You are here selecting the best course of action)
Call to duty. Regardless of what happened before nurses take oath to serve everyone without discrimination or personal differences. All differences must be put aside and life saving made a priority in the nursing or health sector.
Why is that virtue or those virtues to be shown?
Willingness, honest, trust and selfless are the virtues to be shown. Through those virtues the nurse shows that nursing is a noble profession. It’s a profession where you must do what you must do to save a life despite limitations.
How should the virtue or virtues be expressed, and why in that manner?
In everything we do while giving the nursing services, commitment and self-care is important. While offering the services, we as nurses should never forget to do self-care for the best of our health. We should also know the limits of how far we should go. We should also never forget about professionalism and the commitment to serve the people that need our help .
Apply Aristotle’s golden mean to the dilemma.
Aristotle’s golden mean denotes that every action needs a balance, and everything should be done sufficiently. Mean is coming to the middle so that its not underdone or overdone (Rachels 2019). ‘A man is not called brave because he kills neither too many nor too few of the enemy. Everything should be done with right object, at the right time to the right people’. If we underdo, then the intended objective will not be made and if we overdo then one party is likely to suffer. Despite the situation, the nurse still what she had to do to save the woman. She didn’t have to anything to harm her, but she helped her.
Tell us how the dilemma involves conflict moral duties (loyalty to community versus to self, professional versus familial duties, national or personal obligations).
The nurse had a commitment of working in the hospital and the main purpose is to save life. So regardless of the circumstances she still had a duty .She never rejected to help her because of their past but did what she was supposed to do wholeheartedly .She didn’t have to choice other than acting professionally and doing what is right and keeping to standards and putting in place the virtues and ethics of nursing
Reference
Salamone, M.A. (2021). Aristotle’s Political Justice and the Golden Ratio between the Three Opposing Criteria for the Distribution of Public Goods among Citizens: Freedom, Wealth, and Virtue. Philosophies (Basel), 6(4), 96–. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies6040096Links to an external site.
Rachels, J. (2019). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education (US).
