Nurses are committed to serve their patients with utmost competence and highest

sensitivity to ethical standards. More often than not, they engage in life and death decisions

hence, ethics are fundamental to the integrity of their profession – the nursing profession. With

these, the Nine Tenets of the Code of Ethics for Nurses will serve as the guiding principle on

how the nurses should serve their patients. Hereunder is the two provisions that’s equally

important to the other seven in the performance of duties and responsibilities of a Nurse.

Provision 1 . The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity,

worth, and unique attributes of every person.

1.1 Respect for Human Dignity. A fundamental principle that underlies all nursing

practice is respect for the inherent dignity, worth, unique attributes, and human rights of all

individuals. The need for and right to health care is a universal, transcending all individual

differences. Nurses consider the needs and respect the values of each person in every

professional relationship and setting, they provide leadership in the development and

implementation of changes in public and health policies that support this duty.

This tenet, entails that every nurses should adhere to the ethical standards with a

compassionate heart and respect for the individuality of each of their patients. Having said that,

nurses can provide services and care with sympathetic consciousness of others with earnest

desire to alleviate it. Nurses that serve with compassion and respect for their patient’s dignity,

worth and uniqueness make patients more comfortable when they’re in pain, feeling ill or

suffering from mental or emotional stress. By providing such care, nurses can provide their

patients with support and confidence they need to prepare for a lengthy recovery, face a
frightening surgical procedure or fight a devastating disease and the like (Nursing News;

Compassionate Nurse: The Importance of Compassion in Nursing; Americanmobile.com).

Provision 5. The Nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the

responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity,

maintain competence, and continue personal and professional growth.

5.2 Promotion of Personal Health, Safety, and Well-being. As professionals who assess,

intervene, evaluate, protect, promote, educate, and conduct research for the health and safety of

others and society, nurses have a duty to take the same care for their own health and safety.

Nurses should model the same health maintenance and health promotion measures that they

teach and research, seek health care when needed, and avoid taking unnecessary risks to health

or safety in the course of their customary professional and personal activities. A healthy diet and

exercise, maintenance of family and personal relationships, adequate leisure and recreation,

attention to spiritual or religious needs, and satisfying work must be held in balance to promote

and maintain the health and well-being of the nurse.

Every day nurses is dealing with pressures but they must work gracefully despite said

pressures. However, nurses are expected to take care of themselves, respect themselves and be

responsible with their own selves as they are expected to give the same to their patients.

Besides, no person can give what they don’t have, hence, nurses must exude self-love and self-

worth in order to give the same to others particularly to their patients.

It is the job of nurses to help their patients and to care for them. Sometimes they are the

only ones available, particularly as life's beginnings and endings, when patients are unable to

speak for themselves, to help make those decisions. Having a code of ethics to fall back on can
help strengthen our voices and provide a framework for the decision making process

(https://www.rncentral.com/blog/2012/9-provisions-for-being-an-ethical-nurse/).