title: Professional ethics and patients' rights: past realities, future imperatives.
abstract: The nature and application of professional ethics in relation to patients' rights is not always clearly understood by healthcare professionals. As a result, patients' rights are not always respected or upheld in a way that they ought to be. An undersirable consequence of this has been that patients have suffered otherwise avoidable harms. The issue of professional ethics and patients' rights is one of concern to all healthcare professionals. It is of particular concern to nurses since they are the ones who are often caught in situations involving abuses of patients' rights. This paper briefly examines the failure of professional ethics to prevent patients' rights' abuses in healthcare contexts. It also makes recommendations on how the nursing profession could respond to this problem.
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, Phillip Institute of Technology, (Bundoora Campus), Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Johnstone
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D032781:Codes of Ethics; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D005065:Euthanasia; D005260:Female; D006805:Human Experimentation; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D038622:Internationality; D008297:Male; D028683:National Socialism; D010344:Patient Advocacy; D028701:Patient Rights; D018579:Patient Selection; D011209:Power, Psychological; D028743:Professional Misconduct; D011364:Professional Practice / Q000592:standards; D012297:Right to Die