Patients around the world are choosing Cannabis medicine and they all deserve evidence based nursing care.
Cannabis nurses are already needed for the 3 million people in the United States with cannabis recommendations.
Every patient choosing or resorting to cannabis medicine, after all other conventional treatments have failed, are made vulnerable by multiple factors including a broad gap in nurses educated in evidenced based, cannabinoid science.
Although the American Nurses Association position statement “In support of patients’ safe access to therapeutic marijuana/cannabis” was published early as 2008, few nurses know the provision exists to help protect the patients Right to Self Determination, the right of each person to determine what should or should not be done to their person.
Untruthful, Federal Scheduling of Cannabis as “highly addictive with no medical use”, coupled with lack of knowledge, fear for loss of licensure, cultural, political and personal bias has left patients “on their own” to seek help from anyone with knowledge and experience relating to cannabis.
Patients seeking both conventional care and cannabis therapy are likely to receive conflicting advice or negative propaganda from providers, thereby denying them the benefit of trusted expertise required to achieve an informed decision.
These factors, in addition to the dangerous criminalization of patients contributes to the overall vulnerability of the patient, creating barriers to Self Determination and the autonomy to decide what is best for one’s own person.
Society has the moral and obligation of Beneficence, the duty to provide all available life sparing and lifesaving treatment options to anyone facing life threatening or life debilitating dis-ease. In contrast to Non-maleficence, the contract physicians and nurses have to “do no harm”.
One can make the case that denying patients life saving or life sparing medical treatment, such as cannabis, is a direct violation of human rights and more specifically patients rights. As every patient is entitled make one’s own decisions about what should or should not be done to their own personage.
Any denial of information or access to recommended treatments based on bias, is in direct violation of these principles and especially of non – maleficence, the principle of do know harm.
Doing the work of integrating cannabis science into nursing practice has made one thing glaringly clear…every patient testimonial is actually a clearly descriptive narrative of how the Right to Self Determination and Autonomy was violated by a provider adamantly opposed to recommending cannabis therapy based on fear of sanctions, lack of scientific evidence or personal beliefs.
My hope is to motivate patients to dry their tears and get angry! Cannabis patients rights are being violated everyday with the outright Federal denial of
the efficacy of cannabis medicine.
“We all have the power to effect change and remedy unjust treatment”
Every patient saved by cannabis must rise up and demand the right to cannabis, from providers, hospital systems and indeed the Nation.
Dry your tears I say…get angry, don’t just walk away…Take action!
RiseUp Dear Souls! I love you…
Nurse Courtney
