Legal and Ethical Obligations of Nurses in Healthcare

Nursing
1/11/2019
Student’s Name

NURSING 1
Nurse and doctors are the significant healthcare professionals that owe a duty of care to
patients (Peate, 2013). They are required to take every step very carefully and it becomes the
responsibility of them to act in the best possible manner for the patient. Every nation has certain
legislation on the topic of healthcare that governs the behavior of healthcare professionals. If to
talk about the US, every state has its own Nurse practice Act that consists of provisions related to
healthcare practitioners and regulate the practices of the same. In conjunction with the Nurse
Practice Act, some other laws are also there in the US, which a healthcare professional needs to
be aware of such as standard of practices. Apart from the legal obligations, a healthcare
professional also has some ethical obligations towards the patients. In the US, the code of ethics
and social policy documents are the two important documents, which prescribed the ethical
responsibility of nurses.
In the given case, Lena is facing an ethical dilemma that whether she should inform her
sister about the health status of her boyfriend or not. Here, in order to provide advice to Lena,
one needs to check the legal and ethical position of the same first. If to talk about law, the Texas
board of nursing issued rules and regulations related to nursing and practices. These rules consist
of the Standards of Nursing Practice under section 217.11. These standards are applicable to all
the nurses. According to these standards, nurses are required to keep the information related to a
patient safe and secure. This is a legal obligation of every nurse to respect the client’s right to
privacy by keeping the confidential information with him/her. Further to say that a nurse cannot
disclose such information unless the same is required or approved by the virtue of a law. In
addition to the Texas Nursing Board’s minimum standard of nursing practice, healthcare privacy
law of federal and states also prevent the healthcare professionals to disclose the confidential
information related to the patients. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996