Legal and Professional Issues in Nursing

Running head: LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
Name of the Student:
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1LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
Introduction
The essay focuses on the case study that involves certain breaches in the cultural
safety and clinical governance areas in a nursing profession and disturbing the principals
involved in cultural safety and clinical governance (Jabari et al., 2015). Cultural safety is
defined as the policy that focuses on respecting the social and cultural differences under
health services and clinical governance is defined as the NHS framework that aims to
improve the quality of life in patient (Farokhzadian, Nayeri & Borhani, 2018). The essay will
also focus on the strategies that will be recommended to counteract the breach present in the
case scenario that revolves around the activity of nursing student who was placed in a
metropolitan ward and was now confident in assessing and treating the patient.
Incident 1: Breach in cultural safety
Cultural safety area is chosen as the first incident because in the case study it was
clearly seen that huge cultural difference was present in between the nurse and the patient
(Johnstone & Facn, 2019). Mrs Maria was an 87 years old women who was from Greek and
could not speak English properly. She was suffering from exacerbation of COAD. The
patient’s daughter in law was also present. As soon as the nurse visited the patient, her
daughter-in-law complained that the patient was suffering from pain and required some
immediate medication. The nurse had checked the medication order and finds out that
nothing was order to relief the patient from pain hence she visited her senior doctor and took
2 Panadol to give it to the patient. The patient denied to take medicine from the nurse and
even the nurse was unable to convince her (DiCuccio, 2015). The patient’s daughter-in-law
takes the medicine from the nurse and speaks to the patient in Greek that the nurse could not
understand and explain the patient regarding the advantage of consuming the medicine. The
nurse was unable to communicate with the patient regarding her problem or concern towards

2LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
her health that was a major breach in the cultural safety (Paradiso & Sweeney, 2018). There
was a major cultural and social difference between the nurse and the patient that was
restricting the nurse to communicate and explain the patient regarding her health issue and
what medicines and treatment would effectively help to overcome from her health condition.
According to Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA), cultural safety and
effective communication is considered as an important domain for building a therapeutic and
healthy relationship with the patient that is respectful and culturally safe
(Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2019). Being a nurse I would ask the higher authority of the
hospital to arrange for a nurse who is Greek and could easily communicate with the patient
and could translate the conversation to the patient in a respectful manner maintaining the
cultural safety and respect of the patient. The assistant Greek nurse could easily translate the
concern of the patient to the nurse and even the patient would feel better as she could easily
convey her worries to the nurse. The assistant nurse with similar cultural background as the
patient would help the registered nurse as well as the doctors to better understand the concern
of the patient related to their health issues and effectively communicate with the patient
thereby allowing the nurse to treat the patient in a better way reducing the cultural gap and
breach (Holland, 2017).
Incident 2: Breach in Clinical Governance
Clinical Governance is defined as a system by which every organizations present
within the healthcare system are responsible for constantly improving and modifying the
superiority of the clinical services in healthcare and safeguarding high patient care standards
by producing a motivated environment that would allow the nurses and doctors to excel in
their specialty and flourish (Tuan, 2015). The staff members present within the healthcare
organization are motivated to provide their best standard of care to the patient. Clinical
governance area is chosen as the second incident because in the case study, bad clinical