Practice Question
A nurse is faced with an ethical dilemma involving the use of healthcare informatics. What is the first step in applying an ethical decision-making model?
Answer Choices:
Correct Answer:
Identify the ethical issue or problem.
Rationale:
💠 Ethical decision-making models typically begin with clearly identifying the ethical issue or problem at hand.
💠 Without understanding exactly what is wrong or in conflict (e.g., privacy vs. access, autonomy vs. safety), subsequent steps may be misdirected.
💠 Clearly naming the ethical dilemma helps frame later actions like fact gathering, consultation, and evaluation of options.
💠 In informatics, this might involve issues such as data privacy, security breaches, or inappropriate access to client records.
💠 Identifying the problem first gives the team a focused starting point to apply ethical principles like beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice.
Consult legal counsel to avoid personal accountability.
💠 Going straight to legal counsel as a first step skips essential stages of professional and ethical reflection.
💠 Ethical models encourage nurses and teams to first clarify the ethical nature of the problem before escalating to legal review.
💠 Consulting legal counsel can be appropriate later, but it should not be used simply to avoid personal accountability or decision-making.
💠 The goal is to engage in a systematic ethical process, not immediately transfer responsibility elsewhere.
💠 Therefore, this option is not aligned with recognized ethical decision-making frameworks.
Implement a solution without consulting others.
💠 Implementing a solution too quickly without consultation can lead to biased, incomplete, or ethically unsound decisions.
💠 Ethical dilemmas in informatics often involve multiple stakeholders (clients, providers, IT, administrators), so collaboration is crucial.
💠 Skipping steps like identifying the issue, gathering facts, and exploring options undermines the integrity of the ethical process.
💠 It also increases the risk of violating policies, laws, or professional standards.
💠 Because ethical models emphasize structured, thoughtful steps, this approach is inappropriate.
Gather all relevant facts and data.
💠 Gathering facts and data is a very important early step, but it usually follows identifying the ethical problem.
💠 Without first naming the ethical issue, you may not know which facts are relevant or what information needs to be collected.
💠 Ethical frameworks often describe a sequence: identify the problem, then collect relevant information, then consider options and principles.
💠 This option describes a valid step, but not the first one in the decision-making model.
💠 Thus, it is close but not as accurate as starting with clear problem identification.
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This question is from Examplify RN Informatics which contains 8 questions.
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Question Details
- Category: RN Nursing Exam(s)
- Subcategory: Examplify Exam(s)
- Domain: RN Informatics 🌐
- Answer Choices: 4