Patient empowerment is an experience of change in a patient’s personal aspect. It is more about who one is rather than what one does. Patient empowerment is continuous, patient-centered, related to the issue and acknowledged by the patient as well as the medical officer, the doctor (Aujoulat, D’Hoore, & Deccache, 2007). The essay is on patient empowerment, and some of the factors to be considered include an example of an ethical dilemma, responses to patients’ unwise decisions and finally the stand on limitations of patient empowerment.

The nurse and the patient may hold different values. The values of a nurse include integrity, respect to patients and acts of benevolence and nonmaleficence. The values of a patient include being informed of their condition, respect for the health workers and freedom to choose between options of treatment. In such a case, there are some factors to be considered when the nurse is dealing with decisions. The nurse needs to consider the outcomes of both situations of the issue.

The freedom a patient has and the control a nurse has is a factor to be considered. When to tell the truth and when to hide it is also a factor to be considered. For instance, consider a case where a patient does not want his/her relatives to know what they are suffering from but the family keeps on insisting to be informed. The nurse needs to consider the outcomes of both situations of the issue before making the decision. The freedom a patient has and the control a nurse has is also another factor to be considered (McAllister, et al., 2012). A nurse may be faced with an ethical dilemma. A patient may, by choice, refuse to eat maybe due to lack of hope in their healing again. Well, this is wrong and might end up causing harm to the patient, but the nurse needs to take the initiative of luring the patient into eating. The nurse would advise the patient to eat, but the patient will make the final decision.

Patients may sometimes make unwise decisions based on their state of health or emotions. If a medical practitioner feels that a patient is making a wrong decision, they should employ a well-structure plan of making the patient aware of it and also work towards correcting the decision (Aujoulat, D’Hoore, & Deccache, 2007). This will change the patient’s mind without worsening their condition due to the emotional burden associated.

Patient empowerment is a very instrumental part in the patient’s healing and well-being. However, the empowerment needs to have limits. By giving the patients entitlement to empowerment, the clinicians might abandon some compliance policies in their job policies to foster their relationship with their patients shifting power balance to patients. For example, a patient could be entitled to too much freedom to their medication until they decide not to take their medicine any more. Furthermore, not all patients are willing to be empowered (McAllister, et al., 2012). This becomes an issue and before empowerment, full consent of a patient is considered.