The ethical dilemma arise from this clinical case
According to the patient's case, the patient Mr Green with end stage aggressive prostate cancer who had been confirmed that he only have 4–6 week to live expresses the suicide attempt to a nursing staff and asks nurse do not tell others. The behavior of patient put the nursing staff in a difficult situation, which can be identified as an ethical dilemma. Beauchamp and Walters [2] defined an ethical dilemma as a situation happens when person must make a choice among mutually exclusive alternatives. According to Chally and Loric [3], an ethical dilemma always occurs when “a moral problem involving two or more mutually exclusive, morally correct actions” (p. 17). In Mr Green's case, after the patient confided the suicide attempt, the nursing staff has two exclusive, morally correct choices. If the nurse chooses to keep secret as patient required, this behavior will respect patient's own decision. However, the nursing staff's decision may cause the patient actually commit suicide without any healthcare intervention. If the nursing staff chose to tell other health care team members about patient's suicide attempt, the health care team would be involved in monitoring, prevention and avoiding suicide, but the patient's autonomy, confidentiality would be violated. Therefore, the major ethical dilemma of this case can be identified as ‘if the nursing staff should tell other health care team members about patient's suicide attempt without patient's consent.’