ETHICAL CARING REGARDING GENETICS AND GENOMICS
Nurses are the most trusted professionals in the United States of America. Nurses have the advantage or the privilege of knowing the generic composition of the patients they handle. Due to this, nurses need to maintain high ethical standards in matters dealing with individual genetics and genomics. Nurses, in the delegation of duties, come across tasks that involve disease prevention and health promotion. When handling these situations, nurses come across various patients’ information, which is very discreet. For this information to remain private, nurses need to incorporate their multiple ethics to work. Nurses need to give attention to how they handle various patients’ knowledge about genetics and genomics to make it ethically acceptable.
The inclusion of genetics and genomics give rise to the ethical responsibility that comes along with these responsibilities hence introducing genethics. Genethics comes from the responsibility of the nurses to keep genetic information from the public and secure from any distortion. Genetic composition and their defects in various individuals is a confidential process that should be held only by the authorized people involved (“Nurses Transforming Health Care Using Genetics and Genomics,” 2017). In the nursing profession, you learn all these genetics from patients, but you have to know who to share with this information for credibility.
Advancement of genetics has come around with a lot of disagreements with the right view of life. Religion, for example, has come a long way in discrediting some activities like cloning that involve genetics. However, some of these practices are conducted to save lives. However, much controversial they may be, in some instances, these genetic functions are the only solutions (“Nurses Transforming Health Care Using Genetics and Genomics,” 2017). This role means that nurses, despite their stands on these issues, they have to uphold them and put the life of the patient in good care.
Nurses can be in a position to identify the genetic composition of a patient and most likely of the family too. This factor means that the nurse needs to be acquitted with the skill required in advising and revealing this news to the families. Some of these members of the family may not take such issues seriously, but as a nurse, you should come up with a way of informing them of the imminent dangers (Torres, 2014). A nurse should reach out to the possible patients and request them to take a diagnosis because it might be a growing defect too.
Pharmacogenomics is the study of allocation and administration of medication to patients who have diseases or conditions that relate to genetics. For example, patients who are suffering from HIV/AIDS have to be tested on their generic composition before receiving the conventional medication called abacavir. However, through research, it has been realised that this medication should only be administered to HIV positive patients who do not have the HLA-B*5701 allele. Similarly, breast cancer patients who possess epidermal growth with receptor two will receive a different medication from those who test negative on the receptor two alleles. Although testing positive of the allele does not necessarily mean it is hereditary, a continuous repetition of these receptor warrants treatment of next of kin for prevention (Torres, 2014). That way, nurses have to incorporate their genethics skill in their profession.
Genetic and genomic advancement has brought about roles and responsibilities in the nursing profession, genethics. This genethics has been the code of conduct that the nurses need to adhere to in their job and their daily activities. The advancement of genetics has come along with several other responsibilities since some of these practices have not been accepted universally but are essential in the protection of human life.
References
National Coalition for Health Professional Education in Genetics. Core competencies in genetics essential for all health-care professionals. 2015. [cited April 4, 2018]; Available from: http://www.nchpeg.org/ [PubMed]
Nurses Transforming Health Care Using Genetics and Genomics. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835985/
Torres, L. (2014). I Am a Critical Care Nurse. Critical Care Nurse, 34(1), 84-84. doi:10.4037/ccn2014895