| Course | NR 351 Foundational Concepts for the Practicing RN |
|---|---|
| Week | 3 |
| Paper type | Professional concept paper |
| Length | About 1,110 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | RN-to-BSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 351 Week 3
Moral Courage at the Bedside: A Professional Concept Applied to One Night of Practice
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 351: Foundational Concepts for the Practicing RN
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Moral Courage at the Bedside: A Professional Concept Applied to One Night of Practice
Nurses often know what the right action is and still find it hard to take. The gap between knowing and acting is where moral courage lives, and it is a concept worth understanding precisely because it is so often confused with other admirable qualities such as compassion or assertiveness. This paper defines moral courage from the nursing literature, identifies its essential features, applies it to one situation from the writer's practice on an adult telemetry unit, and considers what the concept asks of a practicing nurse. The concept was chosen because it has a defined literature in nursing ethics and because the writer can point to a moment in practice when it was needed and was partly missing.
Defining Moral Courage
In a concept analysis of the nursing literature, Numminen et al. (2017) describe moral courage as the willingness to act on one's ethical principles and professional obligations despite the risk of negative consequences, such as conflict, loss of standing or fear of retaliation. The definition has three parts that matter for practice: a recognized ethical obligation, a risk to the person who acts, and action taken anyway. Lachman (2007) makes a similar point, describing moral courage as the individual's capacity to overcome fear and stand up for core values, and she emphasizes that it is a virtue that can be developed rather than a trait a nurse either has or lacks.
The definition rules out several things that are often called courage. Acting ethically when doing so carries no risk is admirable but does not require courage. Taking a risk for a reason that is not an ethical obligation, such as defending a personal preference, is not moral courage either. And recognizing an ethical problem without acting on it, even with good intentions, falls short of the concept, because action is one of its defining parts.
Why the Concept Belongs to Professional Nursing
Moral courage is not only a personal virtue; the profession asks for it. The first provisions of the nursing Code of Ethics place the patient at the center of the nurse's commitment and make advocacy for the patient's rights, health and safety a professional duty rather than a personal choice (American Nurses Association, 2015). Advocacy in that sense sometimes requires a nurse to question a physician's order, to report unsafe conditions or to insist that a patient's stated wishes be followed when others would prefer not to. Each of those actions carries some risk to the nurse, which is why the Code's language implicitly depends on moral courage.
Numminen et al. (2017) also describe consequences of moral courage for nurses themselves. Acting with moral courage can bring professional satisfaction and integrity, but it can also bring conflict and isolation, and failing to act when action was needed is associated with moral distress. The concept therefore matters not only for patients but for how nurses experience their own work over time.
Moral Courage in One Situation
The situation that made this concept real for the writer occurred on a night shift two years ago. A patient in his eighties with advanced heart failure had told the writer, clearly and more than once during the evening, that he did not want to be resuscitated and did not want to return to the intensive care unit. He had capacity, his words were consistent, and he said he had told his cardiologist the same thing at his last clinic visit. His code status in the record was full code, because the admission order set defaulted to it and no one had asked him. At 0200 his blood pressure began to fall, and the covering resident, who had not met him, planned to call the rapid response team and transfer him.
The ethical obligation was clear: the patient had stated his wishes, and the nurse's role was to make sure they were heard before a transfer he did not want. The risks were also clear. The writer was a relatively new nurse, the resident was busy and irritated, and the charge nurse suggested waiting until morning to raise code status with the day team. Acting meant telling a physician at 0200 that his plan might contradict what the patient wanted and asking him to come to the bedside and talk with the patient before calling for transfer.
What Was Done and What Was Missing
The writer did ask the resident to speak with the patient first. The resident came, confirmed the patient's wishes, changed the code status and called the patient's daughter, and the patient was kept comfortable on the unit and died the next afternoon with his family present. By the definition used here, that was an act of moral courage: an ethical obligation, a real risk of conflict with a physician and a senior colleague, and action taken anyway.
It was also incomplete. The writer asked the resident to see the patient but did not challenge the charge nurse's suggestion to wait, and did not report that the order set's default code status had overridden a patient's clearly stated wishes. Nobody was harmed that night, but the same default would affect the next patient. Lachman (2007) argues that moral courage includes speaking up about systems as well as individual cases, and the writer did not take that second step. Looking back, the act that took the most courage was not the one done at 0200 but the one never done at all: a report the next morning to the nurse manager that the order set needed to change.
What the Concept Asks of a Practicing Nurse
Moral courage, as defined here, asks three things of a nurse in daily practice. It asks for clarity about which obligations are ethical and which are preferences, since only the first calls for courage. It asks for a willingness to accept some risk, usually small, such as a physician's irritation or a colleague's disapproval, and to act before the moment passes. And it asks nurses to look past the individual case to the system that produced it, because the same problem will return unless someone reports it. For the writer, the practical commitment that follows is to report any future instance in which a default setting in the record contradicts a patient's documented wishes, through the hospital's safety reporting system, on the same shift it is found.
References
American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements.
Lachman, V. D. (2007). Moral courage: A virtue in need of development? MEDSURG Nursing, 16(2), 131-133.
Numminen, O., Repo, H., & Leino-Kilpi, H. (2017). Moral courage in nursing: A concept analysis. Nursing Ethics, 24(8), 878-891. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733016634155
The Chamberlain NR 351 Week 3 instructions
The Week 3 paper asks you to explore a concept central to professional nursing and connect it to your practice. The grading criteria usually name a clear definition from scholarly sources, an explanation of the concept's place in the profession, an application to a real practice situation, reflection on what it means for your future practice and APA format. Choose a concept narrow enough to define, rather than one that is simply admirable. Take the definition from a concept analysis, not a dictionary. Break it into parts and say what it excludes. Apply it to one situation in enough detail to test each part. Judge your own action honestly, including what was missing.
Inside the NR 351 Week 3 example
A short introduction frames moral courage as the gap between knowing the right action and taking it. The definition section draws on Numminen and colleagues and lists the three parts, then explains what does not count as courage, such as ethical action with no risk. The next section connects the concept to the Code of Ethics provisions on the patient and advocacy, and notes the costs to nurses that Numminen and colleagues describe. The application describes the night shift: an older man with advanced heart failure who had clearly refused resuscitation, a default code status and a charge nurse who suggested waiting. The writer asked the resident to see him. The paper then names what was missing and closes with three things the concept asks of practicing nurses.
Where the points sit in the NR 351 Week 3 rubric
Professional concept papers in NR 351 are generally graded on the definition and its scholarly support, the concept's relevance to professional nursing, application to practice, depth of reflection, organization and APA. The NR 351 application row is the one to win, and the paper wins it by mapping the night shift onto obligation, risk and action. The definition row is credited because the sources are cited and the concept is broken into testable parts. Relevance to the profession scores through the Code of Ethics. Reflection earns its points when the writer judges the incomplete action, not only the admirable part. Organization is clear because each section does one job. Correct references for the Code, Lachman and Numminen and colleagues finish the APA row.
NR 351 Week 3 help: mistakes that cost points
The most common loss on this paper is choosing a concept for being admirable, such as compassion or excellence, and then asserting that it matters without ever taking it apart. Another is a definition taken from a dictionary or written from intuition. Students also describe a situation so loosely that the concept could not be tested against it, or tell only the part of the story that reflects well on them. Patient, colleague and employer details must be removed. First person is fine in the application and reflection sections. Choose a concept that will still work in the later papers of the course. If you are unsure which concept fits your practice, tell us about a situation and an NR 351 Week 3 paper can be planned around it.
Get a NR 351 Week 3 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 3 instructions along with the worksheet or outline your section supplies and the concept you are considering, and a custom example is written to those requirements and returned inside 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free. Which concept you commit to stays your decision.
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NR 351 Week 3 questions, answered
How do I pick a concept that will still work in week five?
Choose one you can define from a source and illustrate from your own practice, and test both before committing. A concept with plenty of literature but no personal example produces a paper with no application section, and a vivid personal example with no literature produces one with no definition. The paper needs both halves to survive.
Can the paper use my own experience as evidence?
As illustration rather than as evidence, which is the distinction the course is teaching. Your practice shows the concept operating; the source establishes what the concept is and why it matters professionally. Papers that use experience to prove a general claim are marked down, while papers that use it to demonstrate a defined concept are exactly what is wanted.
Is first person allowed?
Usually yes in this assignment, and your section will confirm it. The reason it is allowed is that the paper is about your professional identity, so removing yourself defeats it. What still applies is that claims about the concept need sources even when claims about your own practice do not.
Where can I find a free NR 351 Week 3 sample paper?
The complete Week 3 paper on moral courage, with the definition, the link to the Code of Ethics, the night shift application, the honest review of what was missing and three references, is on this page.
What three parts of moral courage does the NR 351 Week 3 paper use?
An ethical obligation, a risk of negative consequences and an action taken anyway, drawn from Numminen and colleagues' concept analysis and used to test the writer's night shift.