NURBN1012 Nursing Context

Legal and Ethical Considerations in Professional Nursing Practice

The legal and ethical considerations in the professional practice for nurses involve the rights and laws which govern the code of conduct in carrying out their nursing care duties (McElroy, 2016). These laws are set and implemented by different professional regulatory bodies for nursing such as AHPRA and ANMAC. The ethical considerations deal with the wrongs and rights the nurses need to consider in their practice while the legal considerations are about the regulations that need to be observed in performing their practice.

The code of ethics of nurses involves the ethical consideration in maintaining human dignity for the patients and also their families, the commitment of nurses in taking care their patients which is the primary goal of nursing care, observation of the boundaries in relation to the nursing profession, the nurse acts as the advocate and protector of the rights of the patient and in ensuring a safe environment for their patient, protection of the privacy and confidentiality of the patients, the observation of ethical considerations of research on human participants such as beneficence, nonmaleficence, equality and fairness and veracity.

The beneficence code of conduct involves the act of doing good while nonmaleficence ethic involves the act of doing no harm or prevention of any kind of harm to patients. Veracity as one of the ethical principles in the nursing profession involves the act of practicing honesty and speaking the truth. These ethical considerations are made so as to ensure proper care is given to the patients and also to guide the nursing professionals in performing the duties accordingly without causing any harm or discomfort to their patients. The professional regulatory bodies for nursing practice require nurses to abide by these legal and ethical considerations in performing their daily nursing duties and penalties for one who breaks or overlooks these principles are set in place (Sharma, 2015).

In this case study, Amy a second-year nursing student at Federation University has been involved in several situations which are against the ethical considerations and the code of conduct of the nursing practice. She was found by the police driving while drunk in March 2020 when she was on her way home from a friend’s birthday party at 2am. Additionally, she tested positive for cocaine abuse. This led to the cancellation of her driving license due to charges of high range drink driving and also use of illicit drug, cocaine. This is contrary to the legal considerations set by the professional regulatory bodies such as AHPRA and therefore, he never made a notification to them about her conviction. She was afraid of the penalties she was likely going to face due to overlooking the legal principles on the use of alcohol and illicit drug abuse for nursing health care professionals.

Furthermore, Amy is facing charges to the police and the Federation University Clinical Placement coordinator for stealing medication during her clinical placement. She was having trouble sleeping due to working shiftwork and she has seen that the medication cupboard was regularly left unlocked and hence he decided to steal a bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of strong painkillers which she intended to give to her friends. Another nurse unfortunately saw her and had to report the matter to the Nurse Unit Manager of the ward she was working in because this was not according to the code of conduct for professional practice for nurses. Amy does not consider the legal and ethical principles of the nursing practice which requires her to keep a higher level of competency in behavior in her professional position of a nurse.

In accordance with the professional practice for nurses which makes the base for a good structure of the nursing practice and ensures nurses offer quality care to patients at different levels of care, Amy’s case is a contrary to these principles. He probably does not understand the need to observe all the codes for ethics, conduct and practice in the professional practice for nurses. It also seems that Amy does not care for the consequences she might face following her overlook on the legal and ethical considerations. It is necessary for a professional nurse to understand and observe the legal regulations influencing their practice and this combined to a good making of decisions ensures that nurses observe safety in offering appropriate health care to the patients ("Professional Practice Model", 2021).

The overlooking of the codes of conduct, ethics and practice for professional nurses is the major cause of the current common criminal law issues in the nursing profession. The criminal law issues resulting due to negligence to observe these legal and ethical principles include; assaults, battery, privacy invasiveness, character defamation, negligence to care and malpractice. Assault is a descriptive term used to refer to the act of causing any harm to the patient without an informed consent from the patient. For instance, when a nurse is to perform an invasive procedure like administration of medication through injection and the patient refuses to give consent for the nurse to undertake the procedure, if the nurse still proceeds to administer the drugs that is an assault to the patient.

Battery on the hand refers to the act of performing a medical procedure different from which the patient offered consent. For instance, if a health care professional required to do colostomy on the patient and the patient had agreed then the surgeon performs appendectomy then battery has occurred. This is a major civil law issue in the medical field and may be attributed to factors such as negligence and also low level of competency of the medical health care provider ("Assault and Battery - Nursing Home Abuse Guide", 2021).

Moreover, every patient is entitled to have his matters handled with a high level of privacy and confidentiality. Therefore, invasion of the privacy of a patient is a major law issue in the nursing practice. The disclosure of a patient’s medical information makes part of the invasion into his private matters and therefore, the health care professional needs to keep patient’s matters about their health status information as private as possible. The legal and ethical considerations for the professional practice for nurses provide guidelines for handling maters dealing with privacy to the medical information of a patient. In case of disclosing medical information of a patient to their family members, the health care professional needs to seek informed consent to the patient (Wheeler, 2012).

Character defamation is another part of the law issues in the nursing practice and it deals with the act of giving false allegations about the health status of a patient. These false allegations distort the good reputation of a patient and this is a form of slander. For instance, telling your colleagues that a patient has a particular disease condition of which it is a false statement and this disclosure affects the self-esteem of the patient then the nurse is charged of defaming the patient’s character. The nurse does not observe the code of conduct for the professional practice of nurses and hence liable for penalties in accordance to the profession regulatory bodies (Robichaux, n.d.).

Nursing malpractice is a form of negligence to the professional practice of nurses and it is a major cause of the civil law issues in the medical field (WILKINSON, 2015). The professional regulatory bodies deduced particular criteria which is applied in the establishment of a nursing malpractice. The criteria involve the identification of the nursing care to a patient neglected by the nurse, the damage caused by nurses in performing particular nursing care procedures such as injury to the patient and the danger exposed to the patient by the nurse not doing the nursing care procedure due to negligence. The professional nursing practice dictates that nurses should offer standard care to their patients and therefore, failure in offering standard care may be claimed as a form of malpractice (Potter, 2020).

According to the code of professional conduct statement one, the professional nurses should practice with competency and also safety in offering nursing care to their patients. A safe and competent nursing practice is free from the personal health limiting factors such as indulging in bad behaviors of alcohol and other substance abuse. This is because, these substances have negative impact on the capacity of nurses to offer safer and competent nursing practice (Naegle, 2021).

In this case study, Amy who is a nursing student is involved in alcohol abuse and also illicit drug abuse, cocaine. These is contrary to the requirement of the nursing professional practice code of conduct as it dictates that nurses should not involve in any behaviors or situations which may impact negatively on the level of their competency. Taking of alcohol and cocaine abuse is a major risk factor affecting the level of competency of the nurses and may influence on the safety of nursing care offered to the patients. Amy’s negligence and overlook of the code of conduct concerning the maintenance of a high level of competency by avoid the abuse of alcohol and other drug substances could affect his nursing practice by lowering the level of safety exposed to her patients (Chau et al., 2018).

Furthermore, Amy is facing charges of stealing medication from his clinical placement health care facility. According to the codes of professional conduct for nursing practice, the nurses should recognize their position as a professional nurse and should conduct themselves I accordance to the set regulations to the profession by the profession regulatory bodies. Amy seems inconsiderate of these laws dealing with the code of conduct in her nursing profession and therefore, decides to steal the medications. She does not consider the patients who should be given those medication and also does not care of the facility’s expenditure in purchasing such medications. She also seems not to care of the repercussion stealing the medications could have on his nursing practice (The principles of nursing practice, n.d.).

Additionally, the code of professional conduct statement 3 states that respect of the property of people in the health care system and also the possessions of their colleague workmates is a key and mandatory value for a professional nurse. In addition, the code of conduct refers to nurses and any other medical health care providers as the stewards of the resources and properties of their organizations and health care facilities where they are employed. The professional code of conduct of a professional nurse therefore requires the nurse to ensure good and proper maintenance of the available resources and proper use of the resources to offer maximum benefits to the people being served by such resources especially the patients. Amy in this case is therefore not keeping by the requirements of the code of conduct for nursing practice as she is stealing the medications meant to be administered to the patients. She is not being a good steward to her health care facility where she is working because she is squandering the available resources which should be used in treating the patients instead of ensuring a proper use of these resources (Ferguson, 2019).

In conclusion, the legal and ethical considerations in nursing health care systems play a major role in ensuring quality, safe and appropriate nursing health care is offered to patients. A misconduct of the professional codes of conduct and practice in the nursing professional practice results in negative impacts in the care given to patient and into several law issues concerning professional nursing practice. Professional misconduct involves the unlawful conduct of a nurse which is contrary to the domain of their practice such as indulging in theft, assaults, drinking behaviors, negligence and other forms of malpractice in the nursing practice. The professional regulatory bodies for nursing have a role to play in the ensuring of implementation of the legal laws and ethical considerations. The regulatory bodies are responsible in the formulation and enforcement of the codes of conduct whose main aim is to ensure quality, safe and appropriate nursing care to patients.

References

Assault and Battery - Nursing Home Abuse Guide. Nursinghomeabuseguide.org. (2021). Retrieved 12 May 2021, from https://www.nursinghomeabuseguide.org/elder-abuse/assault-and-battery/.

Chau, J., Lam, L., Lui, M., Ip, W., Chien, W., Lee, I., & Thompson, D. (2018). A survey of registered nurses’ perceptions of the code of professional conduct in Hong Kong. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 19(23-24), 3527-3534. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2010.03349.x

Ferguson, E. (2019). The Code of Professional Conduct. Veterinary Record, 184(22), 682-682. https://doi.org/10.1136/vr.l3145

McElroy, A. (2016). Fundamental Aspects of Legal, Ethical and Professional Issues in Nursing – Second editionFundamental Aspects of Legal, Ethical and Professional Issues in Nursing – Second edition. Nursing Standard, 25(42), 28-28. https://doi.org/10.7748/ns2011.06.25.42.28.b1222

Naegle, M. (2021). The Need for Alcohol Abuse-Related Education in Nursing Curricula. PubMed Central (PMC). Retrieved 12 May 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6876411/.

Potter, P. (2020). Fundamentals of nursing. ELSEVIER - HEALTH Science.

Professional Practice Model. Carefulnursing.ie. (2021). Retrieved 12 May 2021, from https://www.carefulnursing.ie/go/overview/professional_practice_model.

Robichaux, C. n.d. Ethical competence in nursing practice.

Sharma, B. (2015). Regulatory Bodies Perceived Retailing Ethics. Journal of Supply Chain Management Systems, 4(4). https://doi.org/10.21863/jscms/2015.4.4.019

The principles of nursing practice.

Wheeler, H. (2012). Law, ethics and professional issues for nursing. Routledge.

(2015). nursing malpractice. Nursing, 28(6), 34-40. https://doi.org/10.1097/00152193-199806000-00016...

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