Legal Laws and Norms for Registered Nurses

This assignment explores the various legal laws and norms surrounding the profession of registered nurses. It highlights the importance of adhering to rules such as the Nursing Midwifery Order 2001, order of council 2004, and NMC codes to minimize mistakes and ensure patient care. The report emphasizes the significant roles and responsibilities of nurses in their job, including providing instant service to patients and resolving health issues.

Nursing and Law

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Nursing is a profession within health care industry which focussed on care of their patient
its individual, families or community member. Their main objective is to maintain and recover
optimal health of a person (Miller and et. al., 2010). However, legal bodies have enacted number
of legal norms, provisions, rules and regulations in context with nursing practices. Therefore, this
assignment is going to highlight the one aspect of nursing such as; Accountability as well as
throw lights on its impact on nursing. Along with this, some of the examples and statutory
legislation related with accountability is also outlined in the project.
MAIN BODY
Accountability is a term which defined as “taking responsibility for self-action” which
means an individual is responsible for any activity which is done by their end. Professional
nursing accountability means acquiring obligation for one’s nursing judgments, actions as well
as omissions. It related with life-long learning, maintaining competency and upholding both
quality care of patient result as well as standards of profession is being answerable for their
actions. However, health service providers are responsible for criminal and civil courts for
making sure that all the activities can meet the legitimate requirements. Additionally, staff
members are accountable for their supervisors in order to follow their agreement of duty.
Moreover, registered practitioners are mainly responsible for regulatory bodies in terms of
standards of practice and patient care (Sterling, 2010). Therefore, registered nurses and midwives
are officially obliged to Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
Thus, legitimate bodies have imposes a duty of care on practitioners whether these are
HCAs, Aps, students, registered nurses, doctors and so on. Hence, accountability in nursing
means that all the practitioners must make sure that they can perform competently and never
work beyond level of competence (Kjervik and Brous, 2010). For being accountable nurse must
perform few responsibilities such as;
 Have an ability to perform various activities or intervention.
 Accept obligation of doing the activities.
 Have an authority for performing activity via delegation and policies or protocols of an
association.
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In 2016, nursing have considered as most trustable profession for 15th year in a row due
its really indispensable for maintaining the level of trust in profession as well as every healthcare
encounter. American Nursing Association’s code of ethics defines professional accountability
which means; they are answerable to oneself and others own actions. However, nurses regularly
encountered challenges and continually evolving in job demands (Farrar and et. al., 2011).
According to NMC code of professional conduct; standards for conduct, performance and
ethics states that all the registered nurses, midwives and health patient are personally responsible
for the care which they provide to their patient and clients. It means, nurses are accountable for
all actions and omissions as well as all the directions given by other professional (Law, McCann
and O’may, 2011). Thus, nurses are accountable for various members such as;
 to the public, via criminal law
 to patient via through civil law
 to employer through agreement of employment
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 to the profession via the NMC
Hence, nurses accountable these above people and perform all the duties in perfect
manner for fulfilling all of their needs and demand (Connelly and et. al., 2010).
Hence, registered nurses have a responsibility of care and legitimate liability towards
their patients. It means whenever they are going to delegating any activity such as; an HCA or
AP nurses needs to ensure that it must be correctly delegated. Therefore, NMC code states that
registrants are responsible for their judgment to delegate task and duties to another people (Chan
and et. al., 2014). This says they must have;
 Only delegate tasks and responsibilities which are within the individual competence.
 Need to ensure that everyone they delegate tasks to is appropriately supervised and
supported (Law, Akroyd and Burke, 2010).
According to American nurse association (ANA), nurses need to aware about the specific
standards and scope of practices as valuable foundation of rules to excellence in practices and
to deal with the legal implication of standards. The legal implications of nursing are having
great influence on the manner in which nurses are providing care to their patient (Cronquist
and Spector, 2011). Basically, nurses and their provided care are judged on the basis of a
legal definition of standard of care which set for nurses by legitimate bodies. It has been
found that healthcare is the most regulated area of commerce that is associated with the
federal and state norms. They are also accountable by various government plans such as
Medicare or self-imposed to conform a wide range of private initiatives. It would also keep
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their own code of ethics and this is regulated through strict disciplinary regulation that is
entirely controlled by the legal bodies (Maurer and Smith, 2013).
According to The Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001, 2008 (NMC) have established
under Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 which came into force on 1st April 2002. Main
objective of this legislation is to sets the roles and major functions of nurses, methods of
approaching those functions, having certain rights, obligations and powers which they are having
while playing their professional roles (Kurban and et. al., 2010). Apart from this, some of the
legal provisions related with accountability of nurses are; Nursing Midwifery Order 2001
(Transitional provisions) order of council 2004, Nursing and Midwifery council (fitness to
practice) rules order of council 2004 and many more (Wårdh, Jonsson and Wikström, 2012).
CONCLUSION
In the final analysis of the project, it has been concluded that nurses are surrounded with
various types of legal laws and norms which shows their major roles or responsibilities towards
their job. In fact, nurses are appointed to take care of their patient by providing instant service to
the desired person in order to resolve their health issue. Throughout the report, various rules and
regulations are clearly states the major obligation of registered nurses such as; Nursing
Midwifery Order 2001, order of council 2004, NMC codes and many more. It means,
professional nurses have to follow all the codes of conduct which is set by legitimate bodies in
order to minimize the probabilities of mistakes.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Miller, C.L and et. al., 2010. Forensic nursing: An emerging competency for contemporary
practice. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 5(3), pp.98-103.
Sterling, S. ed., 2010. Sustainability education: Perspectives and practice across higher
education. Taylor & Francis.
Kjervik, M.D.K. and Brous, M.E.A., 2010. Law and ethics in advanced practice nursing.
Springer Publishing Company.
Farrar, D and et. al., 2011. Measuring placental transfusion for term births: weighing babies with
cord intact. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 118(1),
pp.70-75.
Law, J., McCann, D. and O’may, F., 2011. Managing change in the care of children with
complex needs: healthcare providers’ perspectives. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 67(12),
pp.2551-2560.
Connelly, P.J and et. al., 2010. Fifteen year comparison of antipsychotic use in people with
dementia within hospital and nursing home settings: sequential cross‐sectional
study. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry: A journal of the psychiatry of late
life and allied sciences, 25(2), pp.160-165.
Chan, Z.C and et. al., 2014. An ethnographical study on the academic experiences of Chinese
male nursing students. Nurse Education in Practice, 14(2), pp.130-136.
Law, L., Akroyd, K. and Burke, L., 2010. Improving nurse documentation and record keeping in
stoma care. British Journal of Nursing, 19(21), pp.1328-1332.
Cronquist, R. and Spector, N., 2011. Nurses and social media: Regulatory concerns and
guidelines. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 2(3), pp.37-40.
Maurer, F.A. and Smith, C.M., 2013. Community/public health nursing practice: Health for
families and populations. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Wårdh, I., Jonsson, M. and Wikström, M., 2012. Attitudes to and knowledge about oral health
care among nursing home personnel–an area in need of
improvement. Gerodontology, 29(2), pp.e787-e792.
Kurban, N.K and et. al., 2010. Evaluation of nursing students’ training in medical law. Nursing
ethics, 17(6), pp.759-768.
Online
The Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001, 2008. [Online]. Available through<
https://www.rcm.org.uk/news-views-and-analysis/analysis/the-nursing-and-midwifery-
order-2001-special-parliamentary-report>
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