Values, ethics, and advocacy

This chapter explores the influence of values on human behaviour and the ethical dimensions of nursing and midwifery practice. The unique nature of nursing and midwifery work places these staff at an individual's bedside as well as in groups of professionals where critical decisions are made about the best way to treat injury and illness and to solve healthcare problems. In the framework described by McCormack, McCance, and Klopper (2017), one of the four constructs of person-centred care relates to prerequisites, or the attributes that nurses and midwives bring to the relationship with their client. These prerequisites relate not only to skills and clinical competence but to the values and beliefs of the nurse or midwife. Therefore, nurses and midwives must have a well-developed understanding of the role of ethics in professional practice and how their own ethical position will affect the care they deliver. Ethics, or morality, poses questions about how we ought to act and how we should live. It is an inquiry into the justification of particular actions (e.g. Are these actions right or wrong?) (Campelia & Dudzinski, 2019).