Measures involving deprivation of liberty in patient care facilities (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Ethics, grade: 1,0, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, language: English, abstract: In nursing, nursing staff are repeatedly confronted with ethical questions and problems. Very often they are confronted with situations that require them to decide on the right course of action and to weigh up different values and interests. One such case is that of measures involving deprivation of liberty. Thus, nursing staff are constantly caught between their (own) thoughts of protection and the residents' claim to freedom. Of course, there are legal guidelines according to which the nursing staff must act, but these are often not sufficient for a concrete decision for or against a measure that deprives a person of his or her freedom. The nursing staff is nevertheless obliged to weigh up the two legal interests: the duty of care to preserve physical integrity and the fundamental right to personal freedom. This problem can lead to an ethical conflict for nursing staff, whereby there can be no general solution but rather the respective interests must be negotiated in the concrete situation, but also the respective advantages and disadvantages must be taken into account. Measures that deprive residents of their liberty thus represent a tightrope walk by the nursing staff between the duty to protect and the residents' right to self-determination.