Linking ethical principles with community practice.

Nurses must frequently make arduous decisions when faced with ethical dilemmas that occur in clinical practice. Utilizing ethical principles for analyzing and reflecting on the issues may ease this difficult task. In addition, the nurse involved may experience less anxiety and uncertainty over whether or not the correct decision was made. The purpose of this article is to present a case study that involves the allocation of a scarce resource that posed an ethical dilemma for a nursing instructor and her students in a community health setting. Toulmin's framework is utilized for analyzing this dilemma.