Decision Making: Approaches and Tools to Respond to Ethical Issues in Genetic and Genomic Nursing

Competent genetic and genomic nursing practice requires the incorporation of various ethical approaches, or tools, into patient decision making. Using different decision-making approaches, which converge to answer an ethical issue, nurses can be confident that their judgment is justified. A lack of convergence can signal a need to reexamine the nurse’s ethical decision-making skills. This article describes four approaches that nurses can use to facilitate ethical decision making, which is a skill that must be learned and practiced; these will then be applied to a genomic case study.

At a Glance

• No one universal approach or tool can be applied to every ethical issue.
• Nurses must assemble a tooklit of ethical approaches to assist patients and their families in making the right decisions for the ethical issues they face.
• When nurses use several tools to arrive at the same decision, they can be confident in their decision-making skills.