Which type of ethics deals with questions and dilemmas that require a choice of action when there is a conflict of rights or obligations between the nurse and the client, the nurse and the client’s family, or the nurse and the physician?

• A. Normative Ethics
• B. Descriptive Ethics
• C. Metaethics
• D. Applied Ethics

Answer: (A)

Normative ethics focuses on what one ought to do and which duties take precedence when rights and obligations clash. In nursing, professionals juggle duties to the patient (respecting autonomy, beneficence, and confidentiality), to the family, and to other clinicians. When a conflict arises—such as balancing a patient’s right to self-determination with family or physician requests—the normative approach asks what action the nurse ought to take given these competing duties. It provides prescriptive standards and decision-making criteria to guide the action that best respects rights while fulfilling professional obligations.

Descriptive ethics would merely describe what people believe or how they actually behave in such situations, without prescribing what should be done. Metaethics would explore the meanings and foundations of moral terms like “right” and “obligation.” Applied ethics involves applying normative principles to concrete cases, but the question centers on identifying the framework that tells us what action ought to be taken in the face of conflicting duties, which is the prescriptive, action-guiding realm of normative ethics.