<p> The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between nurses' use of intuition, years of worked nursing experience, and nurses' perceived ethical decision making ability. Additionally, recognizing the relationship between the intuitive/experiential and the analytic/rational systems, this research extended beyond the intuitive/experiential system capturing analytic/rational thought. A sample of 182 nurses from the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) was recruited for this investigation. A nonexperimental, correlational research design was used to examine the relationship between the variables. Intuition was measured using the Experiential scale of the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI) and analytic/rational was measured using Rationality scale of the REI. Perceived ethical decision making ability was measured with the Clinical Decision Making in Nursing Scale (CDMNS) applied to an ethical dilemma within the participants own practice. Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory (CEST) provided the theoretical framework for this study. According to CEST, information is processed by two independent, interactive conceptual systems; a preconscious intuitive/experiential system and a conscious analytic/rational system. These are thought to function parallel from yet interactively with each other. One-way ANOVAs, independent sample <i>t</i>-tests, Pearson's <i>r</i> correlation, and multiple regressions analysis provided the statistical methods used to answer nine research questions. A significant relationship was found between intuition and perceived ethical decision making (<i>r</i> = .252,<i> p</i> = .001). This contributes to a broader understanding of the different thought processes used by emergency nurses to make ethical decisions.</p><p>

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1976. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-277).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 169 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-144).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-164).

The International Council of Nurses [ICN] Code for Nurses clearly states that the registered nurse's first obligation is to the patient (ICN, 1973). But, in the clinical setting, multiple loyalties or obligations to the patient, family, physician, employing agency, professional standards, and personal ethical beliefs may conflict. Given the diversity of obligation in nursing practice and the ever expanding array of life sustaining technologies and techniques, a problem arises for nurses when they attempt to employ clinical guidelines offered by the ICN Code. Therefore, in order to ascertain how nurses uphold patient autonomy when responding to conflicts in the empirical setting and to delineate the patterns of reasoning which contribute to the actual response as well as to the preferred response, a qualitative grounded theory methodology was selected. This exploratory approach provided evidence that when conflict occurs, perceptions of relevancy on both a cognitive and affective level, influence the nurses' response. Often nurses with apparently equal cognitive capabilities on a moral developmental level perceived conflict of loyalty situations in vastly different ways and thereby responded with a range of behavior that went from exemplary care, which supported patient autonomy, to unsafe care, which completely denied patients their autonomy. An inductively derived substantive theory outlines this variance in care. The manner in which patient autonomy is upheld in multiple loyalty conflicts can be expressed on a three dimensional categorical basis with perceptions of imposed, bounded and volitional relevance conjoined with three levels of cognitive moral development, including both descriptive and normative explanations of conflict resolution. Principles and their supporting rules for nursing action derived from each category emphasize the little researched but complex relationship between moral cognitions, perceptions and affective valuing. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

This study describes nurses' ethical perspectives on nursing dying patients in a critical care setting, as well as nurses' responses to their perspectives. The design involved a phenomenological approach, with unstructured interviews with eight critical care nurses used to generate data. The results indicated that nurses' ethical perspectives centered around a theme of senselessness; a senseless decision-making process, the experiences of patients and family members as senseless, and nurses' activities as senseless. Senselessness illustrated the multiple ethical dilemmas inherent in nurses' experiences. Nurses' ethical perspectives also involved their attempts to cope with senselessness by finding new meanings through shifting focus to patient comfort, support of the family, and to nurses' personal philosophies. The situational context of nurses' perspectives was explored in terms of influences on their perspectives. This study supports other recent nursing research identifying prolongation of the process of dying as a significant ethical problem engendering moral distress. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1991.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1991.

Few studies have explored how medical ethics works in practice specifically in terms of the social processes that result in a decision regarding an ethical problem. This is particularly so in the case of children’s intensive care. More than a decade of teaching healthcare ethics to both nurses and doctors prompted a study to examine how ethical problems are resolved in a children’s intensive care unit. This qualitative study addressed this question in a single large children’s intensive care unit in England. The study was guided by grounded theory in examining via individual face to face unstructured and semi-structured interviews what ethical problems were encountered and how they were resolved. Interviews were conducted mainly with doctors and nurses working on an intensive care unit. Two admitting consultant doctors and three parents were also interviewed. The analysis of data gathered in 20 interviews was developed using Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) framework. A theory emerged from the analysis of the data that revealed the most prominent ethical problems in children’s intensive care related to end-of-life situations. Most significant among these was the decision to withdraw life-preserving interventions from a child. The theory outlines a process by which health professionals involved in the care and treatment of a child in intensive care negotiated a consensus on the point at which it was no longer appropriate to continue life-preserving interventions. This consensus was then presented to parents. Parental assent to withdrawal was facilitated, when not immediately forthcoming, by a process of persuasion.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Minnesota, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-119). Also available on the World Wide Web as a PDF file.