Ethical Issues In The Movie Wit

In the movie Wit, it tells the story of an English Professor that goes by the name of

Vivian Bearing who appears to specialize in poetry, her favorite being sonnets written by John

Donne. Through the movie, she quotes many of John Donne’s sonnets that most of the time is relating to the feelings she is experiencing. Throughout the movie, she frequently quotes the phrase from John Doone, “Death, be not proud”. The movie begins with Vivian Bearing sitting in Dr. Kelekians office, who is a cancer research doctor, discussing her recent diagnosis of stage four ovarian cancer. After they end their conversation she agrees to go through large dose chemotherapy that will serve as research to see if the rigorous chemotherapy will shrink her tumor and eventually kill her cancer.

At one point she even makes the comment that it is not cancer that is making her feel so terrible it is the treatment of cancer that is causing all the debilitating pain. Anytime that either doctor would enter into her room, they would repeatedly stress to her how important this research was, which in my opinion is the only reason she chose to continue treatment.

It is our duty as a nurse to be an advocate for our patient, by this I mean we need to be the ones that speak up for our patient and act for our patient. An advocate is someone that will represent the patient’s viewpoint to other people (Silvestri, 2014, p.50). Along with this, you have the patient’s Bills of Rights which are the rights for a patient to participate in their care. The

Bill of Rights is a list of rights that the patient has and that the hospital can not violate (Silvestri,

2014, p.53). In the film, you see many of times the nurse Susie acting as Vivian Bearing’s advocate. Even though the nurse Susie is acting as her advocate it seems that neither Dr.

Kelekian nor Dr. Posner ever listened to her. When Vivian Bearing chose to become a DNR