Mary the director of nursing at a regional blood bank is concerned about the declining number of blood donors

Mary the director of nursing at a regional blood bank is concerned about the declining number of blood donors

Mary the director of nursing at a regional blood bank is concerned about the declining number of blood donors

Mary, the director of nursing at a regional blood bank, is concerned about the declining number of blood donors

Discussion: Ethical dilemma

BUS4474 Cases

Question:

Mary, the director of nursing at a regional blood bank, is concerned about the declining number of blood donors. It’s May, and Mary knows that the approaching summer will mean increased demands for blood and decreased supplies, especially of rare blood types. She is excited, therefore, when a large corporation offers to host a series of blood drives at all of its locations, beginning at corporate headquarters. Soon after Mary and her staff arrive at the corporate site, Mary hears a disturbance. Apparently, a nurse named Peggy was drawing blood from a male donor with a very rare blood type when the donor fondled her breast. Peggy jumped back and began to cry. Joe, a male colleague, sprang to Peggy defense and told the donor to leave the premises. To Mary’s horror, the male donor was a senior manager with the corporation. What is the ethical dilemma in this case, and what values are in conflict? How should Mary deal with Peggy, Joe, the donor, and representatives of the corporation?

An ethical dilemma or ethical paradox is a decision-making problem between two possible moral imperatives, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable. The complexity arises out of the situational conflict in which obeying one would result in transgressing another. Sometimes called ethical paradoxes in moral philosophy, ethical dilemmas may be invoked to refute an ethical system or moral code, or to improve it so as to resolve the paradox.