Legal and Professional Issues in Nursing

This report analyzes a scenario where professional misconduct has been performed by a nurse by raising both legal as well as professional issues. It provides an overview of the case, accused and accusable misconducts, case analysis, and conclusion.

Running head: LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
Legal and Professional Issues in Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
Table of Content
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Overview of the case.......................................................................................................................2
Accused and accusable misconducts:..............................................................................................3
Case Analysis...................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................9
Reference List................................................................................................................................10

2LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
Introduction
The term professional conduct is referred to the manner in which an individual behave
while acting in a professional ability. It is expected from each and every employees of the
healthcare industry that they will uphold exemplary standard of conduct which is commonly
taken to mean standards which is not generally expected from lay people (Bryce, Foley &
Reeves 2017). In Australia, the code of professional conduct for nurses in Australia is supported
by the code of ethics for Nurses in Australia. According to the latter, there prevails a set of ethics
which needs to be followed by a set of professionals in order to ensure the ‘good standing’ of the
nursing profession. A breach of this code is considered to be either professional misconduct or
unprofessional conduct. Professional misconduct conducted by a nurse chiefly involves the
erroneous and wrong conduct of a healthcare service provider outside the domain of his or her
domain of professional practice. This may include activities like theft, sexual assault, drunk and
disorderly conduct in the public place. on the other hand, unprofessional conduct is referred to
the conduct which is contradictory to the agreed and accepted professional standards. This may
include breaching off the professional principles, violation of the confidentiality of the healthcare
service users as well as other coworkers (Terry et al. 2017). In this report, analysis of a scenario
where professional misconduct has been performed by a nurse has been performed by raising
both legal as well as professional issues. Along with that, with the help of the given scenario, a
better understanding of professional standard as well as professional misconduct will be gained.

3LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
Overview of the case
A tribunal on the behalf of NMBA has been reprimanded on a nurse named Ms. Jodi
Laughlan whose registration has been suspended for three months for performing professional
misconduct concerning medication administration. The mentioned healthcare service user was a
registered nurse at a aged care faculty and she has been accused of performing the following
misconduct. Firstly, she had failed to account 7 ml of morphine. It is suspected that the
healthcare service provider has taken without lawful authority. Not only that, in order to keep
her theft a secret, Ms Jodi Laughlan had replaced the morphine which she had taken with water
(Pickles, de Lacey & King, 2017). Apart from that, she had conducted other unethical at as well.
She had thrown away the post it note in which the medication discrepancy was written down and
had also influenced or tried to influence, another registered nurse in order to prevent reporting
the discrepancy. Thus it can be clearly understood that being a nurse, Ms. Jodi Laughlan did not
performed keeping accordance to the NMBA’s professional standards. While making the
decision, the tribunal had found all the allegations against Ms. Jodi Laughaln proven except the
allegation that Ms. Laughan had taken the morphine as well as self administered it. The
allegations that has been proven are considered to be enough by the tribunal to suspend her
registration for three months, reprimanded her as well as placed circumstances on her
registration, requiring education on schedule 8 medications (Gill et al., 2017).
Accused and accusable misconducts:
Nurses and midwives should be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of
Australia also known as NMBA (Maier, 2015). The NMBA imposed some rules, regulations and
ethical issues in the professional healthcare and nursing practices in Australia are known as

4LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
Professional Standards. NMBA professional Standards are divided into three subsections namely
codes of conduct, standards of practice and code of ethics (Heale & Rieck Buckley, 2015). Code
of conducts are comprise the do’s and don’ts of the nursing practices that involve both the
patients and the healthcare system and authority. Any breach of these rules can cause serious
legal consequences up to cancelation of license or imprisonment. The standard of practices are
collection of care giving medical procedure that should be maintain by a registered nurse to be
considered as a standard nursing practitioner (Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen, 2015).
Ignoring or violation of this standards may initiate legal procedures depending on the severity of
the situation. The code of ethics are group of ethical considerations which should be
implemented in nursing practice in order to be a ethically clear and transparent nurse or
caregiver.
RN or Registered Nurses who have the nursing license should maintain the following
standards in their regular professional practice:
 Critically thinking and analysing the executed practice by following roles and regulation,
ethical consideration and quality management
 Conducting comprehensive assessments of patient condition and executed procedure
 Maintaining the capability for effective practice considering the lifelong learning and
improvement practice (Hannon, 2017)
 Engaging in the Therapeutic and Professional relationship by establishing healthy and
effective relationship with patients as well as other caregivers
 Developing and executing a planed nursing practice including pre development blue
print, framework based approach and risk analysis

5LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
 Providing safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice using scheduled
direction, supervision, diagnosis and care giving services (Martyn et al., 2017)
 Evaluating the outcomes sincerely to inform the executed nursing practice by monitoring
the progress, implementing effective changes and documentation
RN or Registered Nurses who have the nursing license should follow the following code
of conducts in their regular professional practice:
 Complying with legal procedures and policies regarding the diagnosis and treatment
while maintaining lawful behaviour (Bryce, Foley & Reeves, 2017)
 Aligned the nursing practice with person cantered approach with adverse events and open
disclosure
 Developing mutual respect for all cultures and making respectful relationship with
patients and co-workers
 Maintaining professional behaviour by promoting the legal practices (Cashin et al., 2017)
 Teaching, supervising and assessing the students and subordinates
 Conducting research in health to improve the self nursing practice as well as the existing
practice in nursing
 Maintaining the own health and the wellbeing of the colleagues by executing health
advocacy
RN or Registered Nurses who have the nursing license should take care of the following
code of ethics in their regular professional considerations:
 Health of other nurses and co-workers and non-health related workers and professionals
(Snelling, 2016)

6LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
 Cooperative and collaborative relationship with the colleagues with mutual respect
considering ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses
 Sharing the values and ethics of healthcare with the society
 Keeping the own privacy and the privacy of the patients, co-workers and subordinates
through information handling
 Keeping personal health considering mental, physical, social and spiritual wellbeing
maintained
Considering all the above mentioned factors the following legal codes should be imposed as per
the relevancy and tangibility.
 Pursuant to s 196(1)(b)(iii) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Queensland)
(National Law)
As per this act, if a medical practitioner or nurse be proven with adequate avoidance as a
subject of clinical or nursing misconducts, the subject will be considered as guilty and will be
liable for his or her activities. The further penalization and prosecution will be considered as
a part of further verdict (Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au., 2016).
 Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Queensland), s 3A
As per this act, a medical practitioner, nurses or caregivers must follow the NMBA code
of conducts and they will be considered as completely liable for their misconducts and also
will be responsible to show the causes of the executed violations (Cashin et al., 2017).
 193(1)(a)(i) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Queensland) (National Law)
(Snelling, 2016)

7LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
As per this act, during the professional duty hours, a medical practitioner or nurse will be
completely responsible for their behavior and the authority will be also responsible to take
adequate initiative to collect all the evidences regarding the violation and misconducts.
Along with that, they must report to the national health authority for further procedure as per
the severity of the outcomes.
 Health Ombudsman Act 2013 (Qld) (HO Act)
 Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 2009 (Qld) (QCAT Act)
Case Analysis
From the above case overview, it can be clearly understood that Ms Jodi Laughalan had
conducted several breaches of professional standard as well as professional misconduct by
conducting theft of morphine, replacing it by water, self-abusing the drug and attempt to
eradicate all the evidence against her. According to code of professional conduct statement 1,
Nurses are alleged to practice in a safe and competent manner. All the nurses, working under
NMBA are expected to be aware that undertaking activities within their scope of practice may
result in compromisation with the safety of the healthcare service users (Murray et al., 2017).
According to the professional conduct statement 3, every healthcare service users should practice
and beha accordance with laws relevant to the profession and practice of nursing (Murray et al.,
2016). Healthcare service users should be familiar with relevant laws and ensure they do not
engage in clinical or other practices prohibited by such laws or delegate to others activities
prohibited by those laws (Halcomb et al., 2017). Thus, it can be clearly understood that the
mentioned nurse has breached both the codes of professional conduct. Firstly, by failing to

8LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
account for the 7 mL of morphine without lawful authority, Ms Jodi had conducted an illegal act
(Mitchell et al., 2015). Secondly, the fact that she had replaced the amount of taken morphine
with water bear the risk of potential harm to the healthcare service user who will be injected the
diluted morphine in future.
Through this, the subject ignored the nursing standards of Critical thinking and analysing
the executed practice by following roles and regulation, ethical consideration and quality
management. Besides that the fact that she had self-administrated the morphine during her
working schedules I against the code of professional conduct statement 1 of NMBA (Wilson et
al., 2018). According to the mentioned code, all the healthcare service providers should practice
in a safe as well as competent manner that includes avoidance of compromising with their
personal health limitation (Sidebotham et al., 2018). Through this, the subject ignored the
nursing standards of Providing safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice using
scheduled direction, supervision, diagnosis and care giving services. This involves use of
alcohols as well as other substances that has the potential to alter the capacity of the nurse to
practice safely all the time (Fisher, 2017). The code further states that healthcare services
providers, whose health threatens their capacity to practice competently as well as safely posses
a responsibility to seek assistance to address their health requirements.
When it comes to the NMBA professional standard it includes the code of ethics for
nurses in Australia, The code of professional conduct for nurses in Australia and the ICN code of
ethics for nurses. It will also comprise the NMBA Competency Standards for Nurse
Practitioners, Registered Nurses and Enrolled Nurses and The NMBA National Framework for
the Development of Decision-Making Tools for Nursing and Midwifery Practice. Apart from the
above mentioned standards, nurses in Australia also need to abide by standards developed by

9LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
professional nursing organizations (Scanlon et al., 2016). It can be said that Ms. Jodi has violated
all the major mentioned professional standard. Apart from that, for this activity the subject is also
accused for breaching the Pursuant to s 196(1)(b)(iii) of the Health Practitioner Regulation
National Law (Queensland) (National Law). As per this act, the further penalization and
prosecution will be considered as a part of next verdict.
Conclusion:
From the above analysis of the case study of the nursing practice violation it can be
concluded that the accused nurse can be penalised, her RN licence can be cancelled permanently
and even she may a considered as a subject of imprisonment depending on the verdict of legal
and procedural authority. Apart from that it can be said, Nurses and midwives should be
registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia also known as NMBA should
maintain and comply with the NMBA rules, regulations and ethical issues in their professional
healthcare and nursing practices while considering the professional standards as well.

10LEGAL AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING
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