Essay Example on Nurses' Ethics and Social Determinants of Health: Addressing Health Inequity

Nursing ethics addresses how nurses are supposed to treat their patients, act and why. These ethical rules promote the growth of nursing as a profession. On the other hand, Social Determinants of Health are conditions that people live with which derails or improves the condition of the health of an individual or the public.

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Nurses continually seek to address the Social Determinants of Health that contribute to the health inequity through their ethics. Thus, the following describes how the Nursing Code of Ethics relates to the Social Determinants of Health in the practice of nursing.

The Nursing Code of Ethics relates to the Social Determinants of Health through realization. Nursing ethics enables nurses to realize social forces that influence their decision-making while in the field. Nurses do so because it is through nursing ethics that a relationship between disease and the social environment is established (Wilson, 2019). Nurses can help patients with regards to economic or social status and develop the patient's treatment plan by taking the Social Determinants of Health into account.

It does so by realizing how the Social Determinants of Health impact the patient or how they lead to health complications, how to see a patient' needs and where to ethically delegate duties of the Social Determinants of Health as well. Furthermore, the Nursing Code of Ethics and the Social Determinants of Health inform the way nurses view their patients. The environment within which the nurses provide care influences their decision-making on whether they see their patients as consumers or people who need proper medical care (Kneipp et al., 2018). How nurses view their patients is just one example of how society influences the ethics of a nurse. This influence is a way to explain the relationship that ethics and the Social Determinants of Health share in the field.

The Social Determinants of Health not only relates to the Nursing Code of Ethics through realization but informs the way nurses view their patients especially when deciding to provide the best possible care. It does so through influencing the nurses' ethical decisions. Moreover, it provides the platform through which nurses can effectively learn ethics.

Thus, it is clear that the Nursing Code of Ethics and the Social Determinants of Health share an exclusive relationship as nurses are on the frontline of patient care and they are affected to make ethical decisions based on the Social Determinants of Health every day.

References

Kneipp, S. M., Todd, A., Drevdahl, D. J., Canales, M. K., Santacroce, S., & Anderson, R. (2018). Trends in Health Disparities, Health Inequity, and Social Determinants of Health Research.

Thornton, M., & Persaud, S. (2018). Preparing today's nurses: Social determinants of health and nursing education. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 23(3).

Wilson, M. L. (2019). Incorporating social determinants of health into patient care. Nursing Management, 50(12), 13-15.