Assignment Details:

Vignettes are designed to give a brief description of the characteristics related to a clinical case and/or situation that will give context to your chosen ethical dilemma. Therefore, we suggest you consider an ethical situation you have experienced in practice and reflect on the ethics of the situation.

Bear in mind that although it is acceptable to focus mainly on the ethical issues associated with the situation you may also wish to consider professional and legal issues relevant to the situation. The vignette will be a maximum of 500 words and should include the following information:

1. A description of a situation that raised ethical issues from your practice (please ensure you maintain confidentiality/privacy at all times and do not use any patient identifiers).
2. Identification of the ethical and/or legal issues within the situation.
3. References (minimum of 2): Please justify the importance of the ethical dilemma and use suitable legislation or healthcare references that are relevant to your scenario/situation (not included in word count).

Learning Outcomes

The assessment comprises of a 3500-word portfolio that will test your knowledge and understanding of contemporary professional, legal and ethical issues in healthcare in Singapore and wider.  The portfolio will help you achieve the learning outcomes for this module:

LO1.  Critically examine the relationship between law, ethics and ethical reasoning in nursing practice in Singapore.

LO2. Implement and appraise a decision-making process using a legal and ethical framework or code of practice

LO3. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the values-based practice to a population group to inform future delivery of health care services in Singapore

LO4. Critically reflect on the way in which healthcare legislation, culture and society influence ethical nursing practice and health and well-being more broadly.

What is a vignette?

The ethical vignette aims to highlight ethical and legal issues through a record of clinical interactions. We recommend that the ethical dilemma is from a real-life situation that you have experienced, however, it may be a hypothetical case based on your reading of the topic. If you are using a real-life situation please make sure the names and details of the characters, environment and situation are not identifiable (i.e. provide pseudo-names).  In order to write about the case, you must have a clear sense of the value of your ethical dilemma and form a clear picture of the case you wish to present. It is important to stick to the facts about the case.

The vignette ability to capture the ethical and legal issues comes from the structure, therefore it is important to divide into the sections including introduction; case study; assessment of the ethical/legal issue; and plan.  Each section will consist of a narrative describing the historical or social context of the ethical and/or legal issues. Consider what was especially challenging about the case and check if similar cases have been reported previously in the literature.

How to get started in writing your vignette/scenario:

1. Note the facts: who involved?  What is the situation?
2. Identify the ethical issues: what is at stake? what values are in conflict?
3. At what point did you consider there was an ethical/legal problem/dilemma?
4. Brainstorm options available: what did they do? what could have been done?
5. It will be important to think about the message or lesson that the case will present throughout your portfolio.