Caring for Infants, Children and Young Patients

Running head: CARING FOR INFANTS, CHILDREN AND YOUNG PATIENTS
CARING FOR INFANTS, CHILDREN AND YOUNG PATIENTS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1
CARING FOR INFANTS, CHILDREN AND YOUNG PATIENTS
Introduction:
Working with children of different ages brings in a set of challenges for every nursing
professional. It has been seen that healthcare problems have severe effect not only on the
development of the child but also results in huge amount of stress on the patient as well as the
families. This assignment will mainly show how nursing professionals need to follow the ethics
of taking informed consent and follow the professional guidelines of effective mandatory
reporting while treating such patients so that effective care is ensured for them and their families.
Role of nurses in informed consent:
The main concept of informed consent in the healthcare system states that the service
users should be given proper allowance for making the final decision regarding their treatment.
The different necessary elements that need to be fulfilled are the proper competence, disclosure
of the information ability to express the choice, understanding as well as appreciation of the
information that should be disclosed and even voluntariness in decision-making (McKinney et al.
2017). The standard two of the NMBA standards of Practice for the registered nurses is seen to
state that the nursing professionals should engage in effective therapeutic as well as professional
relationships. This relationship should ensure collegial generosity in the matter of mutual trust
and respect between the healthcare professionals and the child patients or the parents according
to the age. In the Australian healthcare system, it is seen that the parents or the legal guardians
are given the sole authority to take decisions on the behalf of the child and as soon as the child
reaches the age of majority like around 18, the later acquires the greater autonomy for the
decision making power. In NSW and in Southern Australia, children are given the authority to

2
CARING FOR INFANTS, CHILDREN AND YOUNG PATIENTS
consent for their children at 14 and 16 respectively (Citizen Child: Australian law and children's
rights 2018).
It is the duty of the nursing professionals to provide important information about the
health condition of the children to the patients in details as this helps in managing the anxiety of
the parents helping them to understand what exactly had happened with the child. The nursing
professionals also need to disclose the available diagnostic and treatment options along with the
risks, benefits, consequences as well as costs attached with each of the options. These help the
parents to take the proper decisions and prevent the nursing professionals in engaging in any
form of legal obligations. They try to suggest to them the best options for the better health of the
children and discuss with them the option of non-treatment that involves informed refusal and its
implications. Following these, the professionals seek for consent about the intervention that they
need to undertake and accordingly document them (James et al. 2014). The process of consent
should be conducted in the language of the young patient or that of the parents of infants and
smaller children and in a procedure that would be according to the level of literacy of the patient
or that of the parents. This would help the nurses to maintain the standard two where they would
be able to establish, sustain and conclude a relationship that would be based on mutual trust and
respect (Standard of practice, Nursing and midwifery board of Australia 2018).
The parents of the children or the young patients would be able to confide on the nurses
and would believe that the nurses are genuinely trying to help them by relieving them from their
suffering. With taking informed consent, nurses will help the patient or the family members feel
that they are experts of their own lives and this would help in maintaining their autonomy and
dignity of patients and their caregivers (Tam et al. 2015). In this way, safe and quality care can
be given that satisfies them.