The Bioethics and Nursing Center of the S. Francisco das Misericórdias School of Nursing is the first Portuguese Institution to dedicate itself to specific bioethical issues within the scope of Nursing. Due to their continuous relationship with the people they care for, Nursing professionals are recognized for their specific vision of ethical issues that arise in the course of their activity. This specific vision justifies the action of this Centre.
From experience, we found the quite notorious absence of a specific bioethical reflection within the scope of Nursing. We see this in the dialogues we have, both with people who carry out their professional activity in this area on a daily basis, and with those who dedicate themselves to research and teaching. The same happens with the available texts: most of them are a bioethics of doctors and for doctors. This observation means that Nursing can only gain by betting on its own reflection, with its specific vision: identifying the ethical issues arising from the exercise of its professional activity.
The creation of the Center for Bioethics and Nursing (CBE) is justified by this option that Nursing in Portugal will also have to make if it wants to keep pace with the reflection of other life and health sciences.
This center belongs to the Escola Superior de Enfermagem S. Francisco das Misericórdias, an Institution of the União das Misericórdias Portuguesas.
We are pleased to see what can be considered good bioethical production in Portugal. This is due to Institutions such as: the Center for the Study of Bioethics, in Coimbra, and its centers in the Azores and Braga; The National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences; and others, such as the Bioethics and Medical Ethics Service of the Faculty of Medicine of Porto, the Institute of Bioethics of the Catholic University of Portugal, the Bioethics Center of the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, the Center for Biomedical Law, and the Medical Genetics Service from the University of Coimbra.
But it is with even greater pleasure that we see the birth of the first Portuguese Institution dedicated to specific bioethical issues within the scope of Nursing.
I completely agree with Nurse Margarida Vieira, Coordinating Professor at the Imaculada Conceição School of Nursing (Porto), when, regarding the contribution of Nursing professionals to the Ethics Committee, she states: “Due to their continuous stay in health institutions, namely in hospitals, Nurses are recognized as having the opportunity to have a longer contact with patients and their families and, therefore, the possibility of a more intimate and in-depth knowledge of their anxieties, their fears, their particular problems and also their desires, their beliefs and values; the Nurse usually presents himself with a face that is closer and more familiar to the patient and family, and has a more spontaneous, more direct and more complete view of the patient's reality; It is this perspective that the Nurse takes to an Ethics Committee, and which is recognized as essential for the Committee to be able to carry out the mission assigned to it in defending the interests of patients” (Margarida Vieira, Composition of the Ethics Committees – The nurse, in Maria do Céu Patrão Neves (coord.), Ethics Committees: from theoretical bases to daily activity, Coimbra Graphics, Assafarge, 2002, 2nd ed., 146).
It is in this same perspective – very unique – that Nursing professionals introduce all their bioethical reflection. If he does not, an extremely important contribution is lost; and we are all lost.
The Center for Bioethics and Nursing intends to make one think, raise questions, provoke serious reflection and study, research and dissemination, bearing in mind the countless problems that constantly arise in everyone's lives today.
Art.
- a) Sharing of experiences between Nursing professionals and other health professionals, for reflection on emerging ethical issues.
- b) Study and investigation of the implications of the development of life and health sciences.
- c) Dissemination of the reflection, study and investigation referred to in the previous paragraphs, through appropriate actions (publications, teaching, conferences, training meetings, etc.).
- d) Systematic collection of documentation related to their area and exchange with similar institutions.
- e) Collaboration with Santas Casas de Misericórdia in initiatives of reflection, training, and others, for the development of their practice of doing good.
- f) Issuance of opinions within the scope of their specialty”.
The sharing of experiences is the starting point of reflection, study, research and dissemination. It is a bioethics based on concerns that arise in professional practice. The methodology is inductive-deductive, in an articulation of in-depth knowledge.
4. Conclusion
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Because we believe in the potential of Nursing as a health science and as a practice in caring that is to love, we are certain of the need for this path to follow. Maybe at this point it's just a dream. But to the dream is added, in many people, a great desire to walk. It is an adventure that now has its beginning. By the consequences we will be able to evaluate all this. Now there's only one thing left: start!
