Registered Nurse's Role in Infant Health: Consent and Reporting

This report analyzes the role of registered nurses in the care of infants, specifically addressing the critical aspects of informed consent and mandatory reporting. The assignment uses a case study of a six-month-old child, Sophia, admitted to the hospital with febrile convulsion and diagnosed with otitis media. The report emphasizes the importance of adhering to the NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice, including critical thinking, care plan development, and comprehensive assessments. It highlights the nurse's responsibilities in ensuring patient safety and well-being, particularly in situations involving potential child abuse or neglect. The report also discusses the ethical and legal considerations surrounding informed consent, especially when dealing with minors, and the need for nurses to communicate effectively with both patients and parents. Furthermore, the report examines the nurse's right and responsibility to report any misconduct or substandard care, ensuring that appropriate actions are taken to protect the child's health. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of nurses in maintaining therapeutic and professional relationships while providing safe and responsive nursing care.

Running head: HEALTH OF INFANTS
HEALTH OF INFANTS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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The nurses play the role of the care giver and of an advocate of the patient by ensuring
that the patients are receiving quality care and by explaining the medical and the nursing
procedures. Problems arise in the area of informed consent for both the patients and the staffs
and those issues which require consent must be identified and corrected by the nurses through
activities of quality assurance (Hein et al. 2015, p.76). People whose works are associated with
the healthcare activities have the responsibilities to report to any specialized state agency when
any violence occurs against those populations. The nurses are responsible to report against any
child abuse or medical neglects of children and aged people (Mathews 2015, pp. 3-25). This
assignment is going to discuss about the role of the registered nurses in reaction to the informed
consent and in relation to the mandatory reporting of a child of six month age who was admitted
to the hospital for suffering from some health issues.
Informed consent must be seen as one of the essential part of the healthcare practice, the
permission of the parents and the child’s assent is an active process which lead to the
engagement of patients including both adults and children, in the healthcare system. The
pediatric practice is different from other practices as this involves the opinion of the child as well
as parents in the decision making process of the clinical practices (Siewert, Cline and Segre
2015, p.104) The concept of the informed consent in the practices of medical includes both the
ethical law and ethical theory. The legal concept addresses the issues of medical malpractices
and the informed consent is supported by the ethical theory which is commonly found in the
concept of autonomy (Lancaster et al. 2015). The nurses and the pediatricians must use
developmentally appropriate languages at the time of discussing about the treatment procedures
with the minors and the information has to be provided in the manner that respects the cognitive
capabilities of the children as well as adolescents (Jordan, MacKay and Woods 2017, pp.192-

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199). Only the patients who have appropriate decision making abilities regarding the healthcare
and treatment procedures can give their consent to the doctor and nurses and those patients who
do not have the proper decision making ability must not take any decision. In such cases the
parents have to give the permission regarding the treatment of the child.
The given case study is about a child of six month of age named Sophia. The child can sit
up herself and play with toys. The social history of the patient showed that the child lived with
her parents and one sibling who was suffering from Downs Syndrome and the birth and the
medical history is showing that she was conceived by IVF and was born via C-Section.
Phototherapy was done fir checking jaundice and NGT feeds and the child did not showed any
allergic responses.
According to the standard 1 of the NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice 2016, the
nurse has to think critically and analyze the nursing practice (Cashin et al. 2017, pp. 255-266). In
the case study, the child suffered from febrile convulsion which lasted for approximately 3
minutes. The patient was diagnosed with otitis media and amoxicillin was recommended to the
patient. So the nurse in the present case must critically think and provide the appropriate nursing
practices. According to the standard 4 of NMBA nursing standards, the nurse should develop a
proper care plan for the patient and the care plan of the patient of case study showed that it was
prepared accurately by considering all the issues that the patient was suffering from. Starting
from the admission to the emergency department, all the assessments were done correctly to the
patients (Trajkovski et al. 2016, pp.239-253). As the patient was suffering from runny nose,
cough and fever, she was administered oxygen to maintain the concentration of oxygen
saturation. NGT was inserted and the medicine amoxicillin was administered. The registered
nurse thus comprehensively conducted the assessments and thus the nurses followed the

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standards 4 and standard 5 of the NMBA nursing standard practices (Cashin et al. 2017, pp. 255-
266). The registered nurses have the right to report mandatorily if any misconducts are done to
the patients specially the children. In the given case study, the pediatrician administered only
amoxicillin, if the doctor would have assessed the child in a better way and spent much more
time with the patient, then other medicines could also have been administered. However the
nurse did not complained about this matter but she had the right to take legal action against this
matter (Leibson and Koren 2015, pp.275-284). The mandatory reporting involve the requirement
of the legislative bodies for the selected groups of people for reporting the suspected cases of the
child abuse and also neglect to the government bodies. There are different types of abuses which
can be reported. The abuses include, physical and mental abuses, emotional abuses and neglect
(Bodenheimer and Bauer 2016, pp.1015-1017). The registered nurse of the given case study,
could have raised the issue of neglect and report about the abuse but she did not raised the issue.
The patient of the case study was a child of six month age, so it was not possible for her to give
consent about the treatment procedures (Lines, Hutton and Grant 2017, pp.302-322). In this case,
the consent of the parents had to be considered to be the final consent regarding the treatment of
the patient. The registered nurse of the patient followed almost all of the NMBA nursing
standards for practice for providing care to the child. The nursing practice that the nurse followed
were safe, appropriate and responsive.
The role of the nurses in relation to the consent and mandatory reporting is very essential
for providing care to the patients. According to the NMBA nursing standards, the nurses have to
maintain both the therapeutic and professional relationships at the time of caring a patient. The
nurses have to communicate properly with the patients by talking with them politely otherwise
the patients will be able to tell them about the health issues that they are suffering from. The

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nursing plan should be prepared by considering all the health issues that the patient is suffering
from.

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References
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Thoms, D. and Fisher, M., 2017. Standards for practice for registered nurses in
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Mathews, B 2015, ‘Mandatory reporting laws: Their origin, nature, and development over time,’
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