Resumen de Failing to Do the Right Thing: Nurse Practice and the Family Experience

Constance L. Milton

• Ethical end of life decisions are increasingly viewed by the global healthcare community as complex and imbued with uncertainty in institutional healthcare settings. Each person experiences health decision-making and the concept of time differently and uniquely. In the context of end of life situations, both the recipients of healthcare and their families may experience complex decision-making in situations where profound questioning and uncertainty surfaces with a struggling of desiring to do the right thing comingling with the possibilities of failing to do the right thing according to the expectations of self and others. This column begins a discussion of possible meanings found in ethical decision-making with families as articulated with the lens of the humanbecoming family model.