Bioethics and nursing. The role of the nurse in organ transplantations.

Abstract

The article aims to examine, on one hand the role of nurses with respect to the relatives of a potential organ donor, and on the other hand, the relationship between the nurse and the receiving patient. In the first case the nurse carries out a double function: a link between the doctors and the relatives after the latter bave been informed of the patient's condition; care of the cadaver in order to try and preserve the organs to be donated until the transplantation. Even in the relationship between the nurse and the receiving patient, the nurse has to give more information and confirmation regarding the communication between the doctor and the patient both before and after the operation. There should therefore be, but this rarely occurs, a protocol of understanding between the doctors and the nurses in order to provide the patient with a complete answer. In the nursing profession, which does not include only jobs to be done, but also relatively autonomous duties, there is the question of the personnel's morality and uprightness. Considering that the nurse is required to pay careful attention to the human aspects of taking care of the patient, he should have an ethical point of reference that, together with other complex abilities, helps him acquire the capacity to orientate his work in an ethical direction. This point of reference is fully identified in the personalistic ethical model. Finally, the ethical center of nursing can be found in the delicate relationship between the principles of autonomy and of beneficiality. This is ethically adequate when the nurse works with the patient's full consent and can thus obtain the best therapeutic result, considering the fact that man is the maximum value.