Human Rights Act 1998: How Nurses Uphold Ethics and Protect Patients' Rights

Running head: HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998
HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998
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HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998
The Human rights Act 1998 was established in the year 2000 in the month of October.
The Human rights Act mainly brought the European convention on the human rights (ECHR)
into the domestic law. This states that all the public authorities need to respect and protect the
rights of all humans whom they serve. Studies show that this act had helped in protecting the
most vulnerable people in the communities which included people who are receiving care and
support (Griffith and Tengah 2017). Nurses always need to stress on the human rights
protection and thereby uphold the ethics as well as values of the profession. Nurses need to be
well aware of the specific actions that they need to maintain for protecting as well as
promoting the human rights in very of the practice settings. This assignment will highlight the
human Right acts 1998 and how nurses can maintain human rights through just actions.
The Human rights Acts in the healthcare industry mainly refer to a number of
important rights of human that every healthcare professionals need to provide respect to. These
are right to life as well as the right by which any patient should never be subjected for
degrading treatment as well as inhuman treatment. The others are right to liberty as well as
security and even the right to respect for family as well as private life (Jacobs 2016). In order to
follow the act, it is extremely important for the nursing principles to follow the ethics of
autonomy. In healthcare practices, autonomy is mainly expressed as the right of the competent
individuals for making informed decisions about their own medical care and about their own
treatment. The nursing professionals need to seek the consent or the informed agreement of
the service users before they start any investigation of treatment procedures (Kavanagh 2015).
This is the human right of every human being to take their own decisions regarding their lives,
regarding their treatment and even regarding their own linking and disliking. Nurses need to
be careful that they do not force any patient to accept treatment or change their decisions

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HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998
regarding their treatment even when the taken decisions do not allow them to live better quality
lives (Wronka 2016). Otherwise, nurses might get involved in legal obligation as a reason of
breaching the human Rights acts for not allowing the individual to maintain their freedom,
autonomy and dignity.
Informed consent to medical treatment is essential in maintaining both ethics and law in
healthcare services. Studies opine that patients need to have the right in receiving information
and asking questions about different recommended treatments so that they can take effective
decisions regarding their care. For ensuring informed consent, nurses need to make sure that
successful communication in the patient-physician relationship is carried on and this helps in
fostering trust and supporting shared decision making. It has been found that the procedure of
informed consent mainly occur when communication between physician and patients ultimately
result in patient’s authorization or agreement for undergoing specific medical interventions
(Dyer 2015). The information that needs to be shared with the patient before taking their
informed consent is their diagnosis, the purpose and nature of the recommended interventions.
The information should also contain the burdens, risks as well as expected benefits of all options
that included forgoing treatments. The nurses also need to respect the right of the patients in
refusing to treatments. This should be respected even when the patient chooses in making a bad
decision resulting in serious disability and even death. According to Gillick competence,
children who are above the age of sixteen are called as Gillick competent. Nurses should
respect their right of refusing treatment as well as their decisions regarding their treatments.
Even if a Gillick competent individual asks the nurses not to share information about their
treatments, nurses need to honour their wishes unless they feel that there are safety issues
associated with it (Wilson 2017).