Exploring Safety and Legal Responsibilities in Mental Health Nursing

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal and ethical responsibilities of nurses in mental health, with a particular focus on patient safety and informed consent. It delves into the importance of adhering to the Mental Health Act, respecting patient rights, and ensuring that patients are actively involved in decision-making processes related to their treatment. The paper highlights the ethical considerations, such as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, that guide nursing practice in mental healthcare. It also addresses the challenges of obtaining informed consent from patients with cognitive disorders and the role of patient representatives in such cases. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for nurses to uphold both legal and ethical standards to protect patient rights and enhance the quality of care in mental health settings. Desklib offers a variety of resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to aid students in their understanding of these critical aspects of mental health nursing.

Running head:CLINICAL INTEGRATION SPECIALTY PRACTICE
Clinical integration specialty practice
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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Introduction
Patients suffering from mental health illness have always been vulnerable to breaching of
the rights and the responsibilities. These patients are often not involve in the decision making
process and deprived of the basic patient rights like autonomy, informed decision making and
informed consent (Nishimura et al., 2013). Informed consent should require special importance
in psychiatry as in many cases patient might not have the capacity to make mental health care
and the treatment decisions. This paper will discuss about the ethical and the legal responsibility
of the nurses in seeking consent from the mental health patients.
Legal responsibilities of the nurses
Informed consent can be referred to as a formal permission that has to be sought the
before commencing a medical treatment to any patients suffering from mental health illness. As
per the Mental health Act 2014, consent should be taken from a patient, if they have the capacity
for giving an informed consent to the treatment or the medical treatment, or if they had been
provided with adequate information for making an informed decision, or if the patient had given
consent freely without any undue pressure or coercion by any other person (Victoria, State
government, 2017). Nurses are accountable to respect the confidentiality and the privacy of the
patient by seeking informed consent. Nurses have the legal obligations to gain a hand written or
legal consent from mental health patients(Nishimura et al., 2013).
As per the mental health laws of each of the state and territory. The laws ensures, that
their dignity is respected, ensure that they receive the best possible professional care and
cooperate as far as possible with the care and the treatment. It has been argued by Nijhawan et

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al., (2015), that patients with psychiatric illness or other cognitive disorder do not have the
capacity to take decision of their own. In such cases, it is the duty of the nurses to understand
whether the patient had understood the rationale behind the informed consent (Surman, 2013,
November). Whenever possible nurses should quote the responses of the patient to assess
whether the patient had assessed the condition of the patient. In case the patient is incapable to
provide an informed consent, then according to the mental health power of attorney, a patient
representative can be chosen to give the consent. It should be mentioned that informed consent
provides autonomy to the patient to make their own decisions(Surman, 2013, November).
Patients are in the receiving sides and hence are susceptible to many malpractices, thus an
informed consent might act as a medical document that can be used during litigation. According
to the Mental health act, a patient might withdraw consent at any time and the treatment should
then stop and appropriate procedures have to be followed.
Ethical responsibility of the nurses in seeking consent
Ethical consideration of nursing care process is an important aspect while providing
effective care in mental healthcare process. Ethics in mental healthcare process helps to add
fairness and equity in the care process and hence, patients are able to achieve mental healthcare
irrespective of their disability, socio- economic status, ethnicity and other factors (Marrone,
2016). As per majority of the patients affected with mental health concerns are unable to provide
their consent as they are not mentally able to understand the risk and benefits they would achieve
while receiving care (Rubin, 2014). This is because the patient would not be able to provide their
nod to the treatment process, and could not be able to assess the risks, alternative treatment and
procedure of the interventions. Hence, the nursing professionals should implement ethical

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considerations for obtaining consent from the patients affected with mental health (Sanjari et al.,
2014).
As per the mental Health Act 2014, however, ethical consideration is an important factor
that should be taken care of while providing mental healthcare to the patient (Rubin, 2014). It
mentions that if the patient is unable to provide consent to the nursing professionals, the guardian
or the person responsible for the care of the patient should be asked for the consent as it is one of
the most crucial factors to maintain the ethical consideration while seeking informed care for the
healthcare process for the patient (Sanjari et al., 2014). Besides, if the patient does not have any
guardian to provide consent, ethically the psychologists conducting the care process is able to
make decision for the care of the patient. However, in this situation, the psychologists and the
nursing professionals should maintain the ethical considerations of care such as autonomy,
beneficence, non-maleficence and justice so that patients and their fundamental and ethical rights
should be complied with (Schrems, 2014). These factors would help the patient to understand the
care process, to provide complete detail of the patient information, and they would be able to
understand the unethical situations which could affect the patient’s healthcare such as religious
factor, cultural aspect, and uninformed mental and medical considerations and so on (Rubin,
2014). Further, through non-maleficence and beneficence, the physician and nursing
professionals would be able to provide them with safe and secured are process that would help to
conduct alternative treatment so that the risk factor of the care process could be decreased.
Therefore, it is mentioned by Sanjari et al. (2014) that while conducting care process, it is
important for the healthcare professionals to collect either verbal or written consent form the
patient hence, the process should be ethically compatible so that the rights of the patient could be
protected and the quality of the care process could be enhanced.

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Conclusion
In conclusion, it could be said that while conducting care for the patients, suffering from
mental healthcare nursing professionals should comply with legal and ethical aspects of care and
should collect the consent from the patients. This paper provided the details of the legal and
ethical aspects that the nursing and mental healthcare professionals should comply with while
conducting care for the patient. Further, the complications and barriers they should overcome in
the process, has also been mentioned in this paper.

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References
Marrone, S. R. (2016). Informed consent examined within the context of culturally congruent
care: An interprofessional perspective. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 27(4), 342-348.
Nijhawan, L. P., Janodia, M. D., Muddukrishna, B. S., Bhat, K. M., Bairy, K. L., Udupa, N.,
&Musmade, P. B. (2013). Informed consent: Issues and challenges. Journal of advanced
pharmaceutical technology & research, 4(3), 134.
Nishimura, A., Carey, J., Erwin, P. J., Tilburt, J. C., Murad, M. H., & McCormick, J. B. (2013).
Improving understanding in the research informed consent process: a systematic review
of 54 interventions tested in randomized control trials. BMC medical ethics, 14(1), 28.
Rubin, S. L. (2014). The clinical trials nurse as subject advocate for minority and culturally
diverse research subjects. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 25(4), 383-387.
Sanjari, M., Bahramnezhad, F., Fomani, F. K., Shoghi, M., & Cheraghi, M. A. (2014). Ethical
challenges of researchers in qualitative studies: the necessity to develop a specific
guideline. Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine, 7.
Schrems, B. M. (2014). Informed consent, vulnerability and the risks of group-specific
attribution. Nursing Ethics, 21(7), 829-843.
Surman, O. S. (2013, November). Informed consent: what the patient heard. In Transplantation
proceedings (Vol. 45, No. 9, pp. 3155-3156). Elsevier

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Victoria, State government, (2017). Informed consent .Access date: 26.3.2019. Retrieved from:
https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/mental-health/practice-and-service-quality/mental-health-
act-2014-handbook/recovery-and-supported-decision-making/informed-consent