Landmark Cases in Nursing Ethics Essay

Nurses face issues related to ethics in their everyday practice (Butts & Rich, 2015, p. 72), for they often have to make difficult decisions and choose between two or more options neither of which is satisfying. While developing one’s ethical principles, it is crucial to study landmark cases that have affected the development of ethics or simply were vivid enough to make a difference. In this paper, we will study two landmark cases and consider their ethical implications for nursing practice.Landmark Cases in Nursing Ethics Essay

One such case is related to a research conducted by Lawrence Kohlberg. The research was reported in 1981 and involved a longitudinal study of the ethical development of 84 boys (no girls were included) over the span of more than 20 years. Kohlberg, grounding his research on Jean Piaget’s achievements, identified six stages of moral development. These stages covered varying age, from childhood to adulthood. When it was attempted to apply the results of the study, the identified stages, to the moral development of women, it was found out that these stages did not describe their moral development of females as well as they did the development of males. Even though it was apparent that not all individuals might reach the sixth stage (at which a person starts to apply universal principles to make moral decisions), it seemed that women mostly reached only the third stage out of six.Landmark Cases in Nursing Ethics Essay