Ethics and Psychiatric Home Care

Abstract

Psychiatric home care offers nurses new ethical challenges. Client autonomy, caregiver beneficence, and client safety often combine to create ethical dilemmas that require much deliberation and inventive decision making. Utilitarian and deontological theories and principles of ethics provide guidelines that can help caregivers work through complex ethical problems. Conflict resolution theory also offers ways of resolving dilemmas that occur when beliefs, values, and personal viewpoints conflict.